Babyloniaca, études de philologie assyro-babylonienne.

COMPOUND VERBS IN SUMERIAN 7

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the variants Gud. Cyl. B XVII 17 ~u s~i-mz-gar and Gud. St. B.
VII 29 9ii gw-mu-la h - " I washed my hands ". It is impossible to
tell in what case 9u may be until better examples of this compound
are found.
b. Compounds with igi ("eye")
1 8. <'T.-~ iqi-bar- " regard " (original idea "turn the
face sidewise to see").
Gud. Cyl. A X111 18 ka-al-bi-S'U iqi-zid-ba-gi-bar ="he cast
a pious look towards the kal 1 ".
Idem. XIX 4-5 ka-al im-tun uru-na-ba-s'A igi-zid-,ba-S~i-,bar= " he
cast a pious look towards the kal, basin of his city ". Cf. Cyl. B
XIII 2.
Here the verb is construed with the preposition gW (ana), repeated in ba-gi. Whenever a verbal form with infixe S'i occurs,7 the sentence either contains the preposition ~t' or the idea of " towards "
is implied. g'inever occurs in passives. The direct case kal-bi before
the postposition is a barbarism; cf. the correct ending in ura-na-ba;
ba is the definite article belonging in sense with hal.
CT XXI 32, 8-9 ka-s'ag-sag-zid-da-ma& igri-zid-he-in-8'i-bai'
may he be favorable to my prayers ".Here the original construction with SW has developed into the regular dative construction,
the only vestige of the original idea being repeated in S'i 2,
IV II 35 no 6 II 3 iqi nam-til-la-ka-ni mu-.qi-in-ba7 —[a]"(when) he turned his lifegiving regard toward me ". Here the elem.ent igi is modified by a construct: " his regard of life ". ni pronoun
direct belongs with igi, the object. A curious fact of Sumerian
grammar is the genitive oblique case ka, ga, following nouns in the
I. A box for making sacred lbricks.
2i. That the infix 9i is a deveclopment from 9i't (BP,. 10509) no longer needs demonstration. Observe the oblique form. of the possessive first person mA not so-called
Eme-Sal. The supposed existence of two dialects in Sumerian does not exist. That
the language developed toward a more phonetic form of writing is natural, hut mQst
of the so-called Eme-Sal readings exist in classical texts,