The

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

i sign is a common use vowel sign. It can be found in many languages, examples being the

Akkadian language Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218–280 was an East Semitic language that is attested ...

of the ''

Epic of Gilgamesh The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian language, Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh (formerly read as Sumerian "Bilgames"), king of Uruk, some of ...

'' (hundreds of years, parts of millenniums) and the mid 14th-century BC Amarna letters; also the

Hittite language Hittite (, or ), also known as Nesite (Nešite/Neshite, Nessite), is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatolia who created an empire centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern ...

-(see table of Hittite cuneiform signs below). In the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' it also has a minor usage as a

sumerogram A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian, Eblaite, or Hittite. Th ...

, I. The usage numbers from the Epic are as follows: ''i''-(698), ''I''-(1). As ''i'' and one of the four vowels in Akkadian (there is no "o"),

scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of Printing press, automatic printing. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as ...

s can easily use one sign (a vowel, or a syllable with a vowel) to substitute one vowel for another. In the Amarna letters, the

segue A segue ( , ; ) is a transition from one topic or section to the next. In music In music, ''segue'' is a direction to the performer. It means ''continue (the next section) without a pause''. The term ''attacca'' is used synonymously. For writ ...

adverb ''"now"'', or "now, at this time", Akkadian language 'enūma', is seldom spelled with the 'e'; instead its spellings are typically: ''anūma'', ''inūma'', and sometimes ''enūma''. In both the Amarna letters and the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' another common use of the "i" sign is for the preposition, Akkadian language ''ina'', spelled ''i- na'', for ''in, into, for, etc.''. (There is an alternate cuneiform sign for ina (cuneiform), a sub-variety use of

aš (cuneiform) 437px, left, Cuneiform sign for aš, dil, ina, ṭel, and as sumerogram AŠ, (sign uses from the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''). File:Amarna letter, EA 362 (p1020178).jpg">250px, Amarna letter 362-(''Reverse''), Rib-Hadda to Pharaoh, with usage of cu ...

, the single, horizontal stroke.)

References

* Moran, William L. 1987, 1992. ''The Amarna Letters.'' Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, 1992. 393 pages.(softcover, ) * Parpola, 1971. ''The Standard Babylonian

'', Parpola, Simo,

Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project is an international scholarly project aimed at collecting and publishing ancient Assyrian texts of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and studies based on them. Its headquarters are in Helsinki in Finland. State Archives ...

, c 1997, Tablet I thru Tablet XII, Index of Names, Sign List, and Glossary-(pp. 119–145), 165 pages. File:Mesopotamian - Cylinder Seal with Human-Headed Griffin Attacking a Horse - Walters 42444.jpg,

Cylinder seal A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in width, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally ...

usage of the i sign (part of

ia (cuneiform) The cuneiform ia sign 𒅀, is a combined sign, containing i (cuneiform) ligatured with a (cuneiform); it has the common meaning in the suffix form ''-ia'', for the meaning of "-mine". In the Amarna letters, the letters written to the Pha ...

)
(had to be inscribed ''in-reverse'' to appear in clay impression correctly). File:Hitite cuneiform kv.png, Hittite language sign table:
(Consonant + following vowel)
Line 1 (vowels): a, e, i, (no "o"), ''u''-(less common), and ú. Cuneiform signs