(Very) Old Friends

In beginning my travels in Akkadian, I’m happy to see my old friends the nominative, genitive and accusative cases in my grammar book.  The dual is/are there too.

Some words familiar from Hebrew:

• Abum, father, Hebrew abba.  Abra-ham means the father of nations.
• Ummum, mother, Heb. im, ima
• Sissû , horse, Heb. sus
• Bītum, house, Heb. bayit; from this word dervice synagogue names like “Beth Am,” House of the People.
• Alpum, ox. Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is derived from a symbol of an ox’s head, meaning strength.  

There is another nifty word, “mimation” which is the suffixing of a letter m.

I always find it comforting to read translation exercises like, “The army of the king was in the city,” and “the wife’s wool is in the house.” The simple declaratives speak to countless generations of scholars, brows knit, with ink (or clay) stained fingers. As we dutifully ponder the mysteries of case-gender-number, it’s hard not to wonder why the wife was so absent-minded and where she meant to take that wool in the first place.