The

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedg ...

na sign is a common, multi-use sign, a syllabic for ''na'', and an alphabetic sign used for ''n'', or ''a''; it is common in both the ''

Epic of Gilgamesh The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, and is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins wit ...

'' over hundreds of years, and the 1350 BC Amarna letters. In the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' it also has

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 or Hittite. Sumerograms are no ...

ic (capital letter (

majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writi ...

)) usage for NA. An example usage for ''NA'' in the Epic is for the spelling of ''NA.GAD'', (also ''

LÚ The cuneiform sign LÚ () is the sign used for "man"; its complement is the symbol for woman: '' šal'' (). Cuneiform ''LÚ'', (or ''lú'' as rendered in some texts) is found as a Sumerogram in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''. It also has a commo ...

.NA.GAD'', and the plural ''

.NA.GAD. MEŠ''), for

Akkadian language Akkadian (, 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 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...

"nāqidu", ''"herdsman"''. The usage for ''NA'' in herdsman is only for 3 spellings. The commonness of cuneiform ''na'', in the top 25 used signs by Buccellati (Buccellati 1979), (2nd highest usage, exceeded by a: '' a (cuneiform)'') is because of usage for the spelling of ''a-na'' (Akkadian language "ana") -, the common preposition spelling for

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to t ...

: ''to, for, by, of, at, etc.''. It is also a component for the Akkadian language preposition: ''i-na'' (''ina''), meaning: ''in, into, by, etc.''. The ''na'' sign usage from the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' is as follows: ''na''-(736 times), ''NA''-(24).

Variety forms of cuneiform "na"

Flickr - Nic's events - British Museum with Cory and Mary, 6 Sep 2007 - 203

In the Amarna letters, EA 205, EA 364, etc., (see her

for a medium resolution, line 3 ''ARAD-ka a-na'', Amarna letter EA 364, EA 364) an alternate form of ''na'', replaces the left side of the sign with: 2-horizontals , and a small wedge above, with the vertical anchoring the right, -. For Marduk-nadin-ahhe's

kudurru A kudurru was a type of stone document used as a boundary stone and as a record of land grants to vassals by the Kassites and later dynasties in ancient Babylonia between the 16th and 7th centuries BC. The original kudurru would typically be store ...

at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...

, ''na'' is constructed approximately as follows: 1-horizontal lies at the sign's left , followed by a large wedge, then the vertical, resulting in a sign approximately as follows: .

References

* Buccellati, Giorgio, (Ugarit-Forschungen 11, 1979). ''Comparative Graphemic Analysis of Old

Babylonian Babylonian may refer to: * Babylon, a Semitic Akkadian city/state of ancient Mesopotamia founded in 1894 BC * Babylonia, an ancient Akkadian-speaking Semitic nation-state and cultural region based in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) ...

and Western Akkadian'', pp. 95–100. *

Moran, William L. William Lambert Moran (August 11, 1921 – December 19, 2000) was an American Assyriologist. He was born in Chicago, United States. In 1939, Moran joined the Jesuit order. He then attended Loyola University in Chicago, where he received his ...

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, c 1997, Tablet I thru Tablet XII, Index of Names, Sign List, and Glossary-(pp. 119–145), 165 pages.(softcover, )-(Volume 1) *Ugarit Forschungen (Neukirchen-Vluyn). UF-11 (1979) honors

Claude Schaeffer Claude may refer to: __NOTOC__ People and fictional characters * Claude (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Claude (surname), a list of people * Claude Lorrain (c. 1600–1682), French landscape painter, draughtsman and etcher ...

, with about 100 articles in 900 pages. pp 95, ff, "Comparative Graphemic Analysis of Old

and Western Akkadian", author Giorgio Buccellati, ( i.e. Ugarit and

Amarna Amarna (; ar, العمارنة, al-ʿamārnah) is an extensive Egyptian archaeological site containing the remains of what was the capital city of the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The city was established in 1346 BC, built at the direction of the Ph ...

(letters), three others, Mari, OB, Royal letters, OB, non-Royal letters). File:MLC 1805.jpg, Line drawing with usage of ''na'' sign.
Used in lines 1, 2, and 4. Cuneiform signs