Bad (cuneiform)
Cuneiform sign / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The cuneiform bad, bat, be, etc. sign is a common multi-use sign in the mid 14th-century BC Amarna letters, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Epic it also has 5 sumerogram uses (capital letter (majuscule)). From Giorgio Buccellati (Buccellati 1979) 'comparative graphemic analysis' (about 360 cuneiform signs, nos. 1 through no. 598E), of 5 categories of letters, the usage numbers of the bad sign are as follows: Old Babylonian Royal letters (71), OB non-Royal letters (392), Mari letters (2108), Amarna letters (334), Ugarit letters (39).[1]
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/B113ellst.png)
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Near_Eastern_-_Cylinder_Seal_with_Standing_Figures_and_Inscriptions_-_Walters_42699_-_Side_A.jpg/640px-Near_Eastern_-_Cylinder_Seal_with_Standing_Figures_and_Inscriptions_-_Walters_42699_-_Side_A.jpg)
(Walters 42699; see clay impression below)
signs read down from top: column left (line no. 1), 3rd sign is the bad sign.
Note line no. 1 appears as "line 3", until printed in the clay, and then appearing as "line no. 1".
The following linguistic elements are used for the bad sign in the 12 chapter (Tablets I-Tablet XII) Epic of Gilgamesh:[2]
- bad (not in Epic)
- bat
- be
- mid
- mit
- sun
- til
- ziz
sumerograms:
- BE
- IDIM
- TIL
- ÚŠ
- ZIZ
The following usage numbers for the linguistic elements of sign bad in the Epic are as follows: bad, (0 times), bat, (61), be, (16), mid, (7), mit, (8), sun, (1), til, (11), ziz, (8), BE, (2), IDIM, (2), TIL, (1), ÚŠ, (2), ZIZ, (1).[3]
Instead of a large horizontal, as seen in the (digitized form, but one type of "bad")
, the sign is seen in the Amarna letters as composed of two opposite facing (triangles), the wedges. It can be seen here , Amarna letter EA 153-(lines 153:4, 11), for "King-Lord-mine", "LUGAL, Be-li-ia", or Be-lí-ia", where "bēlu" is Akkadian for "lord".[4]