Chinese and Sumerian

XX INTRODUCTION

a primitive character like the one in question, but to the remains of an age far more nearly contemporaneous with the origin of the character.

The Sumerian symbol for boat or ship is thus seen to be, not a picture of the object, but of something else which, by its form, suggests two similar parts of it, and so brings to mind the image of the whole vessel, as an udder suggests a she-goat or a lifted foot the dog (see Classi; p. 15). In like manner, the linear form of <zz4| GAN, ‘enclosed plot’, ‘garden’, ‘field’, may possibly figure a gate; thus suggesting a place shut wp or barred against intruders (see Sigu-list, No. 9). This view of the significance of the character is corroborated by its surprisingly close resemblance to the gates figured on an old Babylonian seal which portrays the opening of the Gates of Dawn (Light from the East, p. 151).

A symbol more difficult to deal with, as being less immediately suggestive to a modern eye, is ele NAR, ‘singer’, minstrel’, ‘musician’; a character which is also read LUL, LUG, LUB, LIB, BAG (inferred from Assyrian value pakh), in various senses. The first use, in the sense of ‘singers’ (with Det. Prefix of either sex), is the most important application of the symbol (Br. 7274); and the god Aé was called DUNGA (>>), EE) as the god of musicians (Br. 7270). The word NAR is probably cognate with (or the older sound of) SHAR, SAR, ‘to sing’ or ‘sing with musical accompaniment’ (p. 13; C. Z. xii. 40). This being so, we might have expected that the linear form of the character would resemble that of some musical instrument, a harp, for instance, such as we see depicted in the bas-relief from Ze/-Zé, now in the Louvre Museum (Déc., Pl. 23; see Light from the East, p. 58, for a photographic reproduction) ; and it certainly does present some degree of likeness to an Assyrian ‘dulcimer’ of the seventh century B.c., as figured on a sculptured slab from the palace of Assurbanipal (see Enc. B2b/., col. 3236, fig. 19; col. 3239, fig. 25).

The form of the character, however, and the fact that male singers were usually eunuchs (see the figure of the beardless musician in the sculpture of Assurbanipal’s banquet, Light from the East, p. 202; and cf. the remarks in Perrot and Chipiez, AC. i. 96-103), may suggest another solution, viz. that the linear symbol really figures a drooping phallus (penis emasculatus); the Knee-symbol, with inserted cross, at the top of the ideogram indicating the deprivation of virile power (DUG, 7242, rikilu, penis, coire, coitio+ MASH, ellu, purus). It is not more singular that such a symbol should serve as ideogram for ‘eunuch-singer’, and then simply ‘singer’, than that an erect phallus, emitting semen, should be the common ideogram for ‘lofty’, ‘exalted’, ‘supreme’, in hymns to the gods (MAG, stvuz, hoch, erhaben: see Stgn-list, No. 28). Moreover, the character was also read LUL, in the sense of sarru, ‘insolent’, ‘refractory’, ‘rebellious’, ‘rebel’, ‘wicked’ ; perhaps because eunuchs had a bad name for sullen insubordination. In later times we know that

* It is, of course, possible that in later times the Assyrian phrase garndti Sa éippi, ‘the horns of a ship’,

denoted the ‘yard-arms’ or “sail-yards’ (xepaia; cornua antennarum); but the primitive Euphratean boats were propelled by oars, not sails.