[79] Perhaps, however, this was really due to the accidental similarity of sound between gi, “a reed,” and gin, “to be firm.”
[80] The various forms of vases represented in the early pictography are given by de Morgan in a very instructive article, “Sur les procédés techniques en usage chez les scribes babyloniens,” in the Recueil des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, xxvii. 3, 4 (1905). Among special vases were those for oil, wine and honey. The butter or oil jar was closed with a clay sealing exactly like those of early Egypt. Vases with spouts were also used.
[81] The American excavations at Askabad have shown that the domestication of animals, including the camel, took place during the neolithic age, the goat being one of the last to be tamed.
[82] This, however, is not absolutely certain, since the ideograph which, denotes an “ass” originally signified merely “a yoked beast.”
[83] Peters, Nippur, ii. p. 299.
[84] Thus in the great historical inscription of Entemena, King of Lagas (B.C. 4000), M. Thureau Dangin is probably right in seeing in dam-kha-ra (col. i. 26) a Semitic word. In fact where a word is written syllabically, that is to say phonetically, in a Sumerian text there is an a priori probability that it is a loan-word.
[85] This may of course have been only a literary archaism. But if the kings were really of Semitic origin, it is difficult to understand why they should have been ashamed of being called by their native Semitic names.
[86] See Hommel, Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des Alten Orients, i. pp. 79–82.
[87] Hitherto read A-da-pa. But the character PA had the value of mu when it signified “man,” according to a tablet quoted by Fossey, Contribution au Dictionnaire Sumérien-assyrienne, No. 2666, and in writing early Babylonian names or words the characters with the requisite phonetic values were selected which harmonized ideographically with the sense of the words. Thus out of the various characters which had the phonetic value of mu that was chosen which denoted “man” when the name of the first man was needed to be written. The Semitic Adamu, which M. Thureau Dangin has found used as a proper name in tablets from Tello of the age of Sargon of Akkad, was borrowed from the Sumerian adam, which signified “animal,” and then, more specifically “man.” Thus in the bilingual story of the creation we have (l. 9) uru nu-dim adam nu-mun-ya, “a city was not built, a man was not made to stand upright,” and a list of slaves published by Dr. Scheil (Recueil de Travaux, etc., xx. p. 65) is dated in “the year when Rim-Anum the king (conquered) the land of ... bi and its inhabitants” (adam-bi). See above, p. 76.
[88] Records of the Past, New Series, iii. pp. 124–7.