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 ...

sign ur () is a common-use sign in 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 ...

'', the Amarna letters, and other cuneiform texts. It has multiple sub-uses in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', as well as use for the

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 ...

(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 ...

)), UR. In the Epic, ''UR'' is used to spell

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 ...

''barbaru'', "wolf", as ''UR.BAR.RA (in Tablet VI, and Tablet XI). Cuneiform ''ur'' is a syllabic for "ur", and an alphabetic for "u", or "r". In the Amarna letters, usage is sumerogrammic 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 ...

"dog", spelled either ''UR.KI'', or ''UR.KU'', but the 'dog' reference can be found in many Amarna letters. The cuneiform ''ur''

character (no. 575) is built in a 'rectangular box form', sitting upon a long horizontal stroke. It contains the 2-verticals at left and 1-vertical at right. Three other signs are similarly built, but contain 1-vertical at left, with 2-verticals at right for lu (cuneiform) (with 3-short horizontals in the center, no. 537), and the same but only 1-short horizontal at center,

ib (cuneiform) The cuneiform sign ib, (or ip) is a common-use sign in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', the Amarna letters, and other cuneiform texts. Its common usage is syllabic for ''ib'' (or ''ip''), or alphabetic for ''i'' or ''b''/''p''; the "i" is also exc ...

(also ''ip'', no. 535). The third similar sign, (no. 536) has 1-vertical left and right,

ku (cuneiform) Ku, KU, or Kū may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Ku (fictional language), a constructed language created for the 2005 film The Interpreter * Esther Ku, a Korean-American comedian * Kumi Koda, Japanese pop star nicknamed Ku or Kuu * In an a ...

. It also has 3-short verticals in the center, but is often such a compressed cuneiform character that individual strokes are overwritten, and difficult to identify.

''Epic of Gilgamesh'' usage

Cuneiform ''ur'' has many sub-uses in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''. The following can be found: ''leq''--(1) time, ''lik''--(37), ''liq''--(3), ''tas''--(1), ''taṣ''--(2), ''taš''--(15), ''tés''--(1), ''téš''--(1), ''ur''--(93), ''UR''--(16) times.

References

Citations

Bibliography

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, {{ISBN, 0-8018-6715-0) * 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 and studies based on them. Its headquarters are in Helsinki in Finland. State Archives of Assyria State Archives ...

, c 1997, Tablet I thru Tablet XII, Index of Names, Sign List, and Glossary-(pp. 119–145), 165 pages. Sumerian words and phrases Cuneiform signs