Chinese and Sumerian

INTRODUCTION XIX

SHAM, SAM, ‘price’, which in linear exhibits the measure (D. 60) with an ear of corn (D. 140) inside it (D. 61)—an ideogram which takes us back to the days of exchange by barter or payment in kind; JEYY UDU, ‘a sheep’, which in linear writing is compounded of i MASH, ‘domestic animals’ (6¢/wm; Br. 1749), within ry ‘an enclosure’ (D. 454); FE! SI, ‘gall’, ‘bitterness’, which looks like GU, ‘throat’, with SIG, ‘burn’, inserted (D. 347; cf Dé. en Perse, ii. Ob. de Man.) ; Ey LAL stone ye , ‘sweet’, which in linear depicts a jar of some kind with DUG, ‘good’, ‘sweet’, inscribed on the side of it (D. 357) of. 355; 356); and SIS SHANGA, SHAG, SHA, ‘to be bright or pure’, ‘to purify’, ‘refine metals’, the linear forms of which picture the process of fertilizing the date-palm (a frequent subject of the Assyrian sculptures), which was doubtless regarded as a magical rite of purification of the female tree. (See Sign-lst, No. 106.) The character =], SIG, SI, ‘horn’, would appear from the linear figure to represent, not the straight horn of a bull, but the curving or spiral horn of a ram (D. 47; SJ, c=). Naturally the use of the symbol was extended to include horns of every shape and kind; as also the ‘horns’ or curved ends of the crescent moon, and the ‘horns’ (garnéte) of a ship. The last is an interesting point, because the character for MA, ‘ship’ CHI); is evidently identical with the Horn-symbol, modified by the mere addition of a single short stroke (D. 340: cf, cJ).2 It would seem, then, that a ship or boat was regarded as a horned thing—a thing of which horns, or what from an obvious and striking resemblance could well be called ‘horns’, constituted the most salient feature. How are we to determine what this feature was? If Sumerian writing was really pictorial to begin with, it is reasonable to look to the remains of Sumerian art, preserved in the sculptures and seal-engravings, for the original types of many of the simplified pictures which we find in the linear script. By reference to these monumental sources we have, in fact, already succeeded in explaining several important ideograms; and the present is an instance in which we might very naturally turn for help to the same sources. Now the boats figured on the archaic seals have both ends curved upwards, for all the world like horns; in fact, there is considerable resemblance between a boat of this kind, as depicted on the seals, and the crescent moon as it appears on the seal of Ur-Engur (see the photographs in my Light from the East, pp. 34 and 50). In at least one example the high ends or ‘horns’ of the boat are even curved inwards at the top spirally, like rams’ horns (see Hayes Ward, Cylinder Seals of Western Asia). It seems probable, therefore, that these high horn-like ends are the ‘horns’, which suggested the use of the Horn-pictogram (very slightly modified) as the written symbol for a boat. It goes almost without saying that we should not look to the sculptures of later times, such as those which portray the war-galleys of Sennacherib, for the illustration of

* A Chinese use of the same device may be seen in the S7gn-lis/, Nos. 38-40.

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