Step 4 of 5

More on cuneiform

The first line shows the name of King Samsu-iluna, written from left to right with six signs as sa-am-su-i-lu-na LUGAL (LUGAL means “king”, this sign is half destroyed). Each sign in the cuneiform script is either a syllable (like /sa/) or it can render a complete word, like LUGAL. We often rewrite a cuneiform text sign with signs in our own alphabet to make it easier to read (a “transliteration”). If we do this for LB 800, we can read the text as follows:

  1. MU sa-am-su-i-lu-na LUGAL.E
  2. NAM.KU3.ZU MU.UN.UR4.RA
  3. BAD3 KISH(ki).A BAD3 ME.LAM2.BI KUR.KUR
  4. GU2 (i7)BURANUN.NA.KA MU.UN.DU3.A
  5. U3 BAD3 sa-am-su-i-lu-na
  6. MA.DA wa-ru-um-ma-KE4
  7. GU2 (i7)TUR2.UL3.KA.TA BI2.IN.DIM2.MA
  8. x x x x x x
  9. TA LIMMU2.BA [broken]

Signs such as BAD3 indicate that this is the third sign we know to write the syllable /BAD/. As such we can also write BAD with the signs BAD2 or BAD4. The sign BAD3 means “fortress” or “city wall”. You can probably spot some other words from the translation given in Step 2.