Chinese and Sumerian

INTRODUCTION 1X

earth. (Sve especially the second of the three forms of this character, cited from an old collection, af. Luh-shu Tung, s.v. cat.)

The linear form of the Sumerian character rary BAR, ‘spread out’, ‘ extended’, of a net and other things (Br. 5528 ff.; 3126f.), is evidently a modification of the pictogram for net (see D. 426; of D. 422); and the character Ele KUSH, U, ‘crass’, ‘herbage’, ‘vegetation’, has at least been modified in the same direction, so as to suggest a zetwork of growth, matted and tangled together (see Sugn-lst, No. 84). But the linear form of E]¥y UG (GUG), ‘the land or country’, ‘the people’, which in the oldest known form looks almost exactly like spread out + great (BAR+NUN)an ideogram appropriate enough to the meaning, since the land lies spread out in great stretches all around us,—may rather perhaps have sprung from the Housecharacter discussed above. In that case, the idea of country or nation would be expressed by great house (E+NUN)—an equally suitable combination, since the nation is regarded as one great family dwelling together (see D. 421=423+43 > 426+43). The other linear symbol, which so closely resembles this last that it was merged in the same cuneiform character, rly, read KA-NAM, KA-LAM, ‘the land’, ‘country’, may perhaps be resolved into great (or many?) canal(s) (see Amiaud and Méchineau, 119; 120; of. 129; D. 420=109+ 43); a highly significant combination, inasmuch as Babylonia was a network of canals for irrigation, the vestiges of which are still visible all over the country.

We have no reason to suppose that the primitive Sumerian system of writing was the invention of a single mind or of a single generation. It probably grew up gradually from small beginnings, being extended and enlarged from time to time by the addition of new or modified characters and combinations, the work of the scribes or literati, whose art and mystery it constituted. Some of the symbols with which we have been dealing agree very well with the theory of a Babylonian origin. Shumer (Shinar) or southern Babylonia is a land of rivers and marshes, where reeds and rushes flourish abundantly. Hence the walls and sails of reed matting, and the corresponding ideogram for house and wind. And, as we have seen, the conception of the country as a place of many canals was well suited to the local conditions. Other ideograms for house and country, however, would seem to suggest a different locality as their place of origin. Thus we have <, linear @, U (GU ; from GUR?), ‘a house’ ; strictly, a hole or pit in the ground, as the old linear character itself suggests, as does also the use of it for BUR (=GUR), ‘pit’, ‘cave’ (and even ‘earth’, ‘ground’). Hence it would appear that subterranean dwellings, and caves, natural, or scooped out by human agency in the softer rocks and cliffs, may have served as ‘houses’ to the inventors of the Sumerian script. At all events, this Holesymbol for owse enables us to understand the character 24, which does duty for the two distinct ideas of mountain and country. In the earliest writing it is a threefold repetition of the Pit- (or Cave-)symbol, thus: @® (D. 479). In the sense of country,

1601 b