Sumerian Study Group - Gilgamesh & Aga (part 01)

First session of our brand new Sumerian study group with Gabriele: Gilgamesh and Aga, going line by line. Ping me if you'd like to join (see "About" tab)! The text we're studying can be found here:
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Interested to join the group or learn more about Sumerian? / discord

[@danterosati]

you guys! - sneaking off to do a Sumerian reading group lol! :-)

[@dumupad3-da241]

25:19 - 'the envoys are marked for ergative'. Exactly. But why? The verb 'to go' is intransitive, and only transitive subjects should be marked for ergative. Is is that it's a text from a late period when the scribes weren't native speakers and were making mistakes in their Sumerian? The other alternative I can think of is that Agga is the ergative subject, the envoys are the object and the verb e-re7 is used causatively (cause to go > send). But if that is so, the ergative subject marker in the verbal chain, which should have been -n-, would have to have been omitted. Which seems implausible, since in late texts, the pronominal prefixes before the stem are usually spelt out. And the word order with absolutive first and ergative second would be unusual, too.

[@dumupad3-da241]

Re 46:00 - It's reasonable to expect some Akkadian influence, but I don't think the alternation of tenses/aspects has to be due to Akkadian. It can easily have been a stylistic feature of Sumerian narrative as well. I don't have the impression that this sort of thing is unique to Old Babylonian texts. Also, since marû can correspond to past continuous, I don't see its occurrence here as particularly puzzling. 'He presented the issue before the elders of his city. He was choosing his words carefully.'

[@dumupad3-da241]

32:22 - I don't think that /iri/ has a silent /n/, and /n/ generally isn't a consonant that can be silent in Sumerian. /iri-na/ is /iri-ni/ 'his city' + /-ak/ 'genitive', hence 'the elders of his city', which is also how the ETSCL translates it. I also find many examples of iri-a in In ETSCL, and those wouldn't exist if the word really were /irin/.