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Cuneiform Signs

Analysis and reports to support an international standard for computer encoding of the Cuneiform writing system

Research on the development of Cuneiform signs
 

Correlation of Traditional "Sign" Status with Spacing in the Gudea Statues

Extensive surveys of many other texts are now available. Please click here for those.

This page shows the results of surveying in the Gudea statue texts (GS) and in the Codex Hammurabi (CH) a few forms about which there might be doubt as to whether these are single signs or sequences of signs. The two texts strongly confirm each other.

Evidence is available only in lines which have sufficient space to see the difference between spacing within single signs and spacing between signs. Texts in which signs are all run together with no space, or registers or lines in which that is the case, simply provide no evidence one way or the other.

The normal correlation in the table below has almost all signs in the upper left and the lower right. The opposite corners are the outright or apparent exceptions to the correlations.

Detailed citations for each of the forms are on a separate web page (please click here). Quotation marks around a sign name of the form "SIGN.SIGN" indicate that given the evidence here surveyed, a structurally more appropriate name appears to be as a single unit, thus NIN instead of "SAL.NAM2". (That has no necessary implication in any particular case for what the name of the sign should be in a code standard, if for example it is universally known by some other name. But it is a suggestion for a possible default name consistent with the evidence)

Publications used are

Lucien-Jean Bord and Remo Mugnaioni 2002 *Les Statues Épigraphes de Gudea, Musée du Louvre*, Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, S.A.

E. Bergmann S. J. 1953 *Codex Hammurabi. Textus Primigenius*, Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum.
 
  Traditional Signs Traditional Sign Sequences (Lexical units, not units of the script)
  These appear usually as numbered entries in standard sign lists representing the 150 years of assyriological tradition. (Excluding "variants" which really are that, not distintive.) These appear in most dictionaries as sequences of signs under a headword single sign. Labat is both a sign list and a sign dictionary, so the distinction between lexical entries and single signs is especially clear.
     
Close together, nearly touching, touching, or overlapping

NIN = "SAL.NAM2" (GS passim, CH 6x +)

U3 = "IGI.DIB" (GS 15x) (CH 216x)

UL = "U.GUD" = SHU4 x GUD (GS 8x) (CH 83x)

AR = "IGI.RI" (CH 111x)

PA3 = "IGI.RU" (GS 6x) (in two instances rendered with more white space than is normal, but in those instances it was at end of line-indent, and could have been broken across the line to yield more elegant spacing, yet was not broken)

NA4 (GS 4x)

GUL = SHU4 x URUDU (GS 2x)

SHAB = "PA.IB" (GS 2x)

SHAGAN = "SHU4 x GAN" (CH 15x)

SHUDUN = "SHU2.DUL4" (GS 1x)

This cell contains exceptions:

GIRSU = "GIR2.SU" (many instances) (Not entered in Borger or Labat catalogs as a single sign; a place name important to the texts in which it is found; does occur in GA2 x (GIR2.SU) )

ABZU = "SU.AB" (1x) (single instance, cosmological place, the divine ocean, abyss)
     
Mostly together, single exception

SIPA (GS 4x) (CH 6x) (in one GS instance a scribe treated it as a sequence of two signs PA and LU=UDU, separated by an enormous justification space, but the other instances show this one instance is not normal, is different in some way. Encodings as single sign vs. as sequence of two signs yield very different surface forms if default spacing is normal.

  
   

 
Mostly separate, single exception SA4 = MUSHEN.NA2 if as it seems really 2 signs (8x) (in six instances, loose spacing with much more white space than in typical single signs; in one instance, parts split across a line indent within a register; in one instance, spacing is close enough to resemble spacing in typical single signs. This last instance only could most efficiently be treated as an exception, by using a tiny space between and blocking justification spacing. If the loose spacing in normal usage is considered to signal this is a sign sequence, then we would have to decline to follow Borger and Labat who treated this as a single sign. This is one of the two puzzling cases in this survey. How does it behave in other texts?  
     
Separated by considerable white space  

Not entered in Borger or Labat catalogues as a single sign, consistent with the loose spacing of their parts

E11 = SU.DU (correctly two signs) (7x) (one instance split across line end)

E3 (6x) = UD.DU (correctly two signs)