ù-nê-la equals noun ù-nê = emûḳu, “power” and phonetic complement la.
ù: IGI-DIBBU might be confounded with ḤUL. It is rather carelessly written here. ù, we have seen in [line 1], may mean “lord” in the sense of being “elderly”. ù might mean “mountain”; if so it would be in the sense of being an “ancient mountain”. ù here, however, must be an abstract prefix (MSL. p. XVII). ù, for example, is used as such a prefix with tu, ù-tu being equal to “offspring” (Br. 9470).
nê: PIRIḲḲU in passing from the old Babylonian form which we have in our text meets with much change. The form in our text comes near to being that of the oldest known. Even in Ḥammurabi it begins to take the form of the Assyrian PIRIḲḲU (see CḤ. XLIV. 24. Plate LXXXI). PIRIḲḲU with the value gir which is EK for the ES ner is the common sign for “foot” (Br. 9192). With the meaning of “power” it generally has the value nê (Br. 9184).
la: LALÛ here is essentially the same as the old linear picture which may readily be found in old Sumerian script, given also by Delitzsch (see AL. p. 122, No. 31). la means “fulness” like the Assyrian lalû, but its use in our text is entirely phonetic. We should rather expect ra here. Note that in [line 10], we have ra where we should expect la, and in [line 12], we have da-ma-al-la where the la is regular, just as ra is regular in kur-kur-ra of [line 3].
ma-ma: MAMÛ in its original form is an old hieroglyph representing the earth, so that “earth” or “the land” is a common meaning for ma and equal to the Assyrian mâtu which probably comes from Sumerian ma, “land”, and da, “strong” = DADDU (see [line 1] for further comment).
[9.] ama nà-a gù ne-sig gan-nu ki
The bull of the pasture, the bull that encompassest the productive land.
ama, which in [line 7] was rendered by “lord”, must mean here “bull”, as the word nà-a limits us to this meaning. nà-a means “pasture”. nà-a could be taken as an adjective, descriptive of the attitude of the bull, i. e., that of lying down quietly. We have nà-a again in [line 14]. a is simply phonetic here (see [line 3]).
nà: the sign for the value nà has no sign-name. In almost this form, the sign is easily found in the text of Gudea (see Cylinder B, Col. XVI, line 19, in Déc. 35). The form in our text is very near to the original linear form and differs much from the Assyrian. The ordinary meaning of nà is given by the Assyrian rabâṣu “lie down”, kindred to the Hebrew rābăṣ.
gù, the value here for GUṬṬU, is commonly rendered in Assyrian by alpu “ox”. The sign represents the bull’s head with horns. Historically the sign has three forms, the old Babylonian linear form, the old Babylonian wedge-form and the Assyrian wedge-form. The old Babylonian linear and wedge-forms are the same, except that wedges occur in the latter where simple straight lines appear in the former. The Assyrian form is composed of two horizontal wedges, one upright wedge and two little corner wedges (AL. p. 128, No. 164). The difference between GUṬṬU and AMMU is significant (see note on [line 7]).