Chinese and Sumerian

INTRODUCTION XXlil

monument, which appears to be one of the oldest relics of Sumerian antiquity. (See also Délég. en Perse, ii. 130; D. 464.) The character []]] TUG, TU, TE, MU, ‘garment’, which shares the cuneiform [EY with two similar but not identical linear symbols, may have sprung from a simplified form of the same pictogram (D. 468). On the other hand, [.] KU, DUR, TUSH, ‘to dwell’ (D. 467), looks like a modification of the linear form of Se] GA, MAL, ‘dwelling’ (D. 403; see Szgn-lst, No. 98), being perhaps an instance of an ‘Inverted Character’ (p. 20); while Q]]] ZI, Z1D, ‘pounded grain’, ‘meal’ (gému ; D. 469), which is also represented by JE] in the modern script, may perhaps be an extension of the use of the pictogram for TUG (DUG), ‘covering’, ‘garment’, to include the ws or covering of grain, which is removed by milling. (The use of the unaltered symbol in GISH-TUG, MUSHTUB, ‘ear’, is doubtless purely phonetic: c BPS. 71.) Most of these Sumerian linear characters (allowing for the inevitable percentage of mistaken comparisons) and probably not a few besides, which need not be suggested or considered on the present occasion, may be regarded as finding their actual or approximate pictorial prototypes in objects figured in the remains of early Sumerian and AssyrioBabylonian glyptic art.

* An almost perfect example, which deserves more long ears or projections being merely elongated than the brief reference of p. xvi, is the character exaggerations of the two holes for the handle, which D. 429. Comparing this with the metal vases and are evidently indicated by the two lines crossing the bucket figured AC. ii. 325, we can hardly avoid middle of each projection (see especially /igs. 204 recognizing therein a conventional form of those and 205). Cf the remarks (p. xv swpr.) on the

vessels compounded with the Water-sign; the two tendency to represent round things as square.