I (cuneiform)

The cuneiform i sign is a common use vowel sign. It can be found in many languages, examples being the Akkadian language of the Epic of Gilgamesh (hundreds of years, parts of millenniums) and the mid 14th-century BC Amarna letters; also the Hittite language-(see table of Hittite cuneiform signs below).

In the Epic of Gilgamesh it also has a minor usage as a sumerogram, I. The usage numbers from the Epic are as follows: i-(698), I-(1).

As i and one of the four vowels in Akkadian (there is no "o"), scribes can easily use one sign (a vowel, or a syllable with a vowel) to substitute one vowel for another. In the Amarna letters, the segue adverb "now", or "now, at this time", Akkadian language 'enūma', is seldom spelled with the 'e'; instead its spellings are typically: anūma, inūma, and sometimes enūma. In both the Amarna letters and the Epic of Gilgamesh another common use of the "i" sign is for the preposition, Akkadian language ina, spelled i-na, for in, into, for, etc.. (There is an alternate cuneiform sign for ina (cuneiform), a sub-variety use of aš (cuneiform), the single, horizontal stroke.)

Ši (cuneiform)

The cuneiform sign ši, lim, and sumerogram IGI is a common-use sign of the Amarna letters, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other cuneiform texts. As the syllabic form it is commonly used for ši, lim/lem, and for sumerograms (capital letter majuscules), it is most commonly used for IGI (Akkadian language pānu, for English language "face", "presence", and (with prep.) "before". Also, for ši and lim/lem it can be used syllabically for š, i, l, i/e, and m, in the spelling of words.

Epic of Gilgamesh usage

The ši sign usage in the Epic of Gilgamesh is as follows: lem-(2) times, lim-(25), ši-(299), IGI-(15), ŠI-(1) time.

References

Giš

The cuneiform giš sign, (also common for is, iṣ, and iz), is a common, multi-use sign, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Amarna letters, and other cuneiform texts. It also has a major usage as a sumerogram, GIŠ, (capital letter (majuscule)) for English language "wood", and is used as a determinative at the beginning of words, for items made of wood. The 12 Chapters (Tablets) of the Epic of Gilgamesh lists 16 named items beginning with "GIŠ".

For giš/(is/iz/iṣ) in the construction of words it is used syllabically for giš, and syllabically for the three other constructs; also for eṣ/ez. Besides "giš", it can alphabetically be used for: e, i, s, ṣ, or z.

Epic of Gilgamesh sign usage

The usage numbers for giš in the Epic of Gilgamesh are as follows:eṣ-(2) times, ez, (3), giš, (1), is, (46), iṣ, (77), iz, (17), and GIŠ (355) times.

Epic words with determinative GIŠ

The following list of Akkadian language words are from the sumerograms used in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

References

Ù (cuneiform)

The cuneiform ù sign ('u, no. 3'), is found in both the 14th century BC Amarna letters and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Its use is as a conjunction, (translated as for example: and, but, else, until, etc.), but rarely it is substituted for alphabetic u, but that vowel u is typically represented by 'u, no. 2', (u prime), ú; occasionally 'u, no. 1', (u (cuneiform)), , (mostly used for a conjunction, and numeral 10), is also substituted for the "alphabetic u".

The use of ù is often as a "stand-alone" conjunction, for example between two listed items, but it is used especially as a segue in text, (example Amarna letters), when changing topics, or when inserting segue-pausing positions. In the Amarna letters, it is also commonly immediately followed by a preposition: a-na, or i-na, used as "...And, to....", or "...And, in...."; also "...But, for....", etc. This usage with a preposition is also a better example of the segue usage.

Of the three u's, by graphemic analysis (Buccellati, 1979), the commonness is as follows:

Cuneiform script

Cuneiform script is one of the earliest systems of writing, distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. The name cuneiform itself simply means "wedge shaped", from the Latin cuneus "wedge" and forma "shape," and came into English usage probably from Old French cunéiforme.

Emerging in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BCE (the Uruk IV period), cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, from about 1000 in the Early Bronze Age to about 400 in Late Bronze Age (Hittite cuneiform). The system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs.

The original Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages, and it inspired the Ugaritic alphabet and Old Persian cuneiform. Cuneiform writing was gradually replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, and all knowledge of how to read it was lost until it began to be deciphered in the 19th century.

Cuneiform bones

There are three cuneiform bones in the human foot:

They are located between the navicular bone and the first, second and third metatarsal bones and are medial to the cuboid bone.

Structure

There are three cuneiform bones: