abu, father. The difficulty of reading this script is enormously increased by the fact that many signs are polyphonous, i.e. they may have more than one syllabic value and also be used as an ideogram. Thus the sign
has the ideographic values of matu, land, shadu, mountain, kashadu, to conquer, napachu, to arise (of the sun), and also the syllabic values kur, mad, mat, shad, shat, lat, nad, nat, kin and gin. This method of writing must lead to ambiguity, and this difficulty is helped somewhat by (4) determinatives, which are signs intended to indicate the class to which the word belongs. Thus, the
is placed before names of persons, and
(the ideogram for matu, country, and shadu, mountain) is placed before names of countries and mountains, and
(ilu, god) before the names of gods.