When sister-in-law is your sister

The soap opera of Sumerian has lasted for thousands of years and continues to amuse people of all cultures and all ages.

Unless you are considered an amateur you would never dare look for clues that identify Sumerian with Akkadian, Eblaite or any other Semitic tongue. The reason why the author of the secret language felt secure was that he knew that his fraudulent enterprise was beyond the imagination of a professional linguist. His tricks do not obey any laws and his language did not resemble any other spoken by man.

We have already proven that the person behind the scheme did not care when Sumerian openly shared its terminology with other Semitic languages. The borrowing was allowed to continue uninterrupted unless the words of Sumerian did not belong to the basic vocabulary

used by the common man.

The history has proven that names for body parts are not immune from borrowing. Yet Sumerian does not share a single important ideogram with Akkadian. The author made sure that they seemed two different entities.

Words of the administration, priesthood, metals, fish, animals, agriculture, prayers, abstract nouns were shared across the board with Semitic language. What worried the author was the problem of identity. He was so scared of exposure before his colleagues that to avoid all suspicions he made sure Sumerian became the weirdest tongue ever written by a scribe. To this day scientists scratch their heads to make sense of it all.

The author was aware that technical loanwords were acceptable among the linguists of his age. But what troubled the creator of Sumerian was that his colleagues could detect his secret language. The fact that he tried to keep the core of Sumerian immune to any misgiving can be proven by the abundance of technical terms shared among Eblaite, Akkadian and Sumerian. The master of disguise created the name for [hand] and the name for [head] by omitting certain parts of Akkadian phrases and by presenting an Akkadian particle or a verb as a Sumerian noun. He went even further by testing the intelligence quotient among his peers. He invented the name of the brother and the name of the sister in a very provocative way.

Let us see the demonstration:

Akkadian:

aššat aḫi * , issaḫu * , issi aḫi

[Human → Family]

sister-in-law , brother's wife

Sumerian šeš

šeš [BROTHER] (1579x: ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, Middle Babylonian, unknown) wr. šeš "brother; junior worker, assistant" 

Sumerian:

šeš

šeš [BIRD] (šeš^mušen).

šeš [BROTHER].

šeš [FISH] (šeš^ku₆).

šeš [OBJECT] (^ĝeššeš).

He has placed the phonetic value of [brother] in a very remote and safe ideogram, the same he did with the name head, and the name hand. These ideograms are very poorly represented by respective Akkadian phonetic compliment values to those of Sumerian and very often they do not share a larger phonetic value like other ideograms. They seem completely unrelated to one another. Actually there is no need to prove anything because the very fact that he is hiding these Sumerian names behind some weird and rarely used ideograms speaks volumes of his cunning technique. Yet he is very provocative by using one Semitic noun in a complete opposite setting. The possessive pronoun in Akkadian of the phrase [sister-in-law , brother's wife] becomes the phonetic base for the name [brother] in Sumerian.

While the name [elder brother] in a Semitic language becomes the name [sister] in Sumerian.

SAL.KU

nin₉ (nen₉)

nin [SISTER].

Proto-Semitic: *nin(h)-

Afroasiatic etymology: Afroasiatic etymology

Meaning: 'elder brother' 1, 'master, lord' 2

Soqotri: ninhin 1, 2, ninho 2

Again the ideogram for sister is completely abandoned at whim by the author after he has used it only once. This seems very suspicious because Sumerian is very rich language and each ideogram has dozens of meanings. Yet the name for sister, hand, head, brother are so rarely used and they are so closely linked to Semitic suggestive derivatives.

The author does not stop there but he continues to play cat and mouse:

Sum.

dešana [IN-LAW] wr. de₃-ša-na "mother-in-law"

de₃-ša-na has the structure of a Semitic language where - ša - is the genitive particle identical in Akkadian.

Sum.

ga-ša-an; ga-ša₂-an; ka-ša-an "lady; mistress, owner; lord" 

Again - ša - is the genitive particle identical in Akkadian.

Sum.

mussa [IN-LAW] (53x: ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. mussa; mi₂-us₂-sa; mi₂-sa₂ "son-in-law" Akk. emu şehru

erib [IN-LAW] (6x: Old Babylonian) wr. e-ri-ib; e-rib; erib "father-in-law; sister-in-law" Akk. emum; mārti emi

Sum.

murum [IN-LAW] (10x: Old Babylonian) wr. murum₅; murum₄; uru₈ "father-in-law; brother-in-law" Akk. emu rabû

It is a game of words Sum. [murum₅; murum₄; uru₈ ] with Akk. emu rabû

Sum. e-rib < Akk. emu rabű[m] < Sum. mu-rum

LEX/Old Babylonian/unknown [[muru₅]] = =[SAL.U₄.EDIN] = e-mu-um ra-bu-um OB Diri "Oxford" 362.

The Akkadian scribe chopped the Akkadian phrase into several pieces to create a monstruous Sumerian word. mu-ra-um = murum

Also Sumerian

murub [MIDDLE] (446x: Old Akkadian, Ur III) wr. murub₆; murub₄; murub₂; murub; murub₃ "middle; female genitals, vulva; buttocks, rump; knob; mouth; gate (of city or large building); space between, distance; link; hips" Akk. abullu; birītu; bişşūru; pinku; pû; qablu; qinnatu; ûru

murub [PRIEST] (3x: Old Babylonian) wr. murub; murub₃ "a priest" Akk. ēnu

Akkadian e-mu-um ra-bu-um > Sum. murub [female genitals]

Sumerian homophones are fake as they were not created by means of phonetic assimilation. These words did not receive identical pronunciation during several millennia of language evolution. They are instruments of an artificial tongue that lacks the means of natural expansion.

murub Homophones

murub = SAL

murub₂ = SAL.LAGAR

murub₃ = EN.ME.LAGAR

murub₄ = NISAG

murub₅ = SAL.UŠ.DAM

murub₆ = UD@g

murub_x = SAL.LAGAB

murub_x = UD×U+U+U@g

It is a game of words

Sum. [mi₂-us₂-sa; mi₂-sa₂ ] with Akk. emu şehru

See also Akk. Akk. emu; emītu "father-in-law; mother-in-law" 

Sum. lu₂-mar-za "a functionary in a law court" is a game of words with Akk. mārti emi  "father-in-law; sister-in-law" 

The reason why the author was playing with Semitic words and Semitic grammar structures was behind the location of Sumer. It was a Semitic kingdom, surrounded by Semitic speaking people at the heart of Mesopotamia. Where would the author find these other languages in at a time when contact with other cultures was very limited and the primitive road system did not allow him to wander about the desert to find some strangers on the way. He was an official of the palace and he came up with a great idea but was very limited by time and space to come with a better solution. He had no choice but to manipulate Semitic languages and play them against one another. It is not that he did not want to but he couldn't. There are certain barriers even to geniuses and they have to make due with what they have got. However he was very careful to chose remote opposite words that were somehow related to one another but nobody could prove that there was a relationship among hundreds of other ideograms used everyday. That also means that Sumerian must have been used in public as a religious language during rituals and he had to find words with opposite meanings in both languages to avoid any detection.

aḫu  [ŠEŠ : 
 ]  (n. ; st. constr. aḫi ; pl. aḫḫū)

[Human → Family]

a brother ; aḫāt aḫi : brother's sister ; alti aḫi / issi aḫi : sister-in-law ; mār aḫi : a nephew , the brother's son ; mar ' at aḫi : a niece , the brother's daughter ;

Cf. aḫû (2)

Comparison with other Semitic languages :

Proto-Semitic : ^*ʾaḫ

Arabic : ʾaḫ  أَخ

Syriac : ʾaḥā  ܐܰܚܳܐ

Hebrew : ʾāḥ  אָח

Ugaritic : ảḫ  

Ge'ez : ʾǝḫw

issi

with ; issīšu with him ; issi šarri with the king (also indicates possession : X issīya my X)

Akkadian issi aḫi : sister-in-law means [of the brother/ with the brother]

The phonetic value of Akkadian issi [with] was transferred to Sumerian ŠEŠ [brother]

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