#sumerian time

Hello, and thank you for the kind words! Unfortunately, both of these translations are a bit complicated in Sumerian.

"Dragon" is easy, ushumgal 𒃲𒁔, and "year" is mu 𒈬. The issue is with "thousand", which is not a nice round number in Sumerian like it is in English. Precisely, it'd be ngeshu-ngesh-ash-nimin - 600 + 60 x 6 + 40. Instead, I'd just use ngeshu 𒐞 "600" to make either ushumgalmungeshu 𒃲𒁔𒈬𒐞 "dragon of 600 years" or ushumgal mungeshua 𒃲𒁔𒈬𒐞𒀀 "dragon in (i.e. during) 600 years".

The basic word for "sand" is sahar 𒅖. The word for "time" is a 𒀉, though it more often means "a specific/set time" or "an instance". Instead, I'd use ul 𒌌 "distant time; old ancient" to make saharula 𒅖𒌌𒆷 "sands of distant time".

Hello, and thanks for the kind words!

The Sumerians used a system of twelve or thirteen lunisolar months, similar to other lunisolar calendars like the Hebrew calendar. (In fact, many Hebrew-calendar months derive their names from the Babylonian calendar, a later standardization of the Sumerian calendar months.) In most periods, the months started with the first visible crescent moon (right after the new moon) closest to the spring equinox; months could be anywhere from 28 to 30 days long, depending on when the next new crescent moon was sighted. The months would be:

Barazagngar 𒌚𒁈𒍠𒃻 (~March-April) Ezemgusisu 𒌚𒂡𒄞𒋛𒋢 (~April-May) Sigushubbangar 𒌚𒋞𒄷𒋛𒊒𒁀𒃻 (~May-June) Shunumun 𒌚𒋗𒆰 (~June-July) Neizingar 𒌚𒉈𒉈𒃻 (~July-August) KinInanna 𒌚𒆥𒀭𒈹 (~August-September) Duku 𒌚𒇯𒆬 (~September-October) Apindua 𒌚𒄑𒀳𒂃𒀀 (~October-November) Gan'gane 𒌚𒃶𒃶𒌓𒁺 (~November-December) Abe 𒌚𒀊𒌓𒁺 (~December-January) Ziza 𒌚𒍩𒀀 (~January-February) Shekinku 𒌚𒊺𒆥𒋻 (~February-March) Dirishekinku 𒌚𒋛𒀀𒊺𒆥𒋻 was the intercalary month, only included in some years, to keep the lunar months in line with the annual solar cycle

Note that each month had any of a wide variety of variant spellings, and the system above was pretty unstandardized until the later Babylonian era. The initial 𒌚 sign is the determiner for months and is unpronounced.

I'm having some trouble finding a consistent pattern for "on the #th day of [month name]", but the general way to say "on the #th day of the month" is ituda ud #(-kam), literally "in the month its #th day". Assuming we can slot in a month name, say Duku (the most likely month for late September to fall in), alongside ngi "night" and nishdish (my best guess for "21", whose pronunciation we don't know), then Dukua ngi nishdishakam would be "The 21st night of Duku".

The Sumerian word for hour is "Danna" (𒆜𒁍). Do you know what minutes and seconds were called in Sumerian?

Used a translator, there may be some grammatical or semantic problems. Please don't take it amiss.

Hello! From what I can find, a day (ud 𒌓) was divided into twelve hours, called danna 𒆜𒁍 (also written 𒁕𒈾). A danna was also a unit of distance, a bit less than 11 kilometers (6.7 miles), which was the amount of distance one could march in a danna (at a speed of 5.5 km/h, 3.4 mph).

However, this source on Mesopotamian measurements has the next smallest unit as an (Akkadian) geš, equaling 1/30 of a danna or four of our minutes. I can't find a source for what a geš would be in Sumerian though it may have been written with the signs MU.ESH 𒈬𒍑. But the paper in question (Kasprik & Barros 2020) isn't a NELC source and I can't find what source it even cites for geš. And I can't find any source for a unit of time smaller than a geš, corresponding to a second or certain number of seconds (but see below).

This system is made more complicated by the fact that often in Sumerian texts, especially early ones before the solidification of the danna time system, they would refer to units of time instead with units of volume measure, and dividing up a workday instead of a day. So a ging or "shekel" would refer to 1/60th of a workday, which Englund (1988) assumes is twelve hours, resulting in a ging of about twelve minutes. Smaller units of time would be fractions of a ging - so one of our seconds would be "1/720 ging". If you want a comprehensive and math-heavy analysis of this topic, I recommend Englund's article (though it requires Jstor access).

Hello! The general word I know for "always, ever" in Sumerian is udmeda, written 𒌓𒈨𒁕 in cuneiform. There are other words like ulshe and darishe that more precisely mean "forever" - see this post for more.

Udkurshe, the word you're referring to, can mean "always" but only in the past, as in "I always used to...", and is written 𒌓𒉽𒂠; in a question, it can mean "at any time, ever", as in "did you ever... ?" The Akkadian word matīma is the equivalent of udkurshe, meaning "always" only in the past.

Can you help me translate the phrase "Always were, always will be", please? With omitted pronoun "we". And also I was interested in a category of time in Shumerian language. I studied some Gothic language at University, so want to know how the things are working with Shumerian.

Hello! I’m glad you’re interested in time categories and tense in Sumerian because it’s quite a complex topic - in that it seems improbably simple!

Sumerian has two basic “tenses”, called hamtu and maru, but they don’t exactly correspond to tense in English or other Indo-European languages. Instead, hamtu is used for events in the past, that are completed or punctual, or are generic throughout time; maru is used for ongoing, progressive, repetitive or future events. And the distinction is often very fuzzy, not a hard line like the past/present/future divide in English.

In addition, hamtu and maru aren’t distinguished for all verbs or all sentences. One of those is the verb ngal, “to exist, be (in a place)”, which is unchanging between hamtu and maru both in its root form and its conjugation (like most intransitive verbs). We can, however, add the special future marker -e(d)-, which only appears in intransitive conjugation.

Certainly! The word for “dawn” in Sumerian is uzalla or udzalla, written 𒌓𒉌or sometimes 𒌓𒉌𒆷, which literally means “the day (is) elapsing”.

Absolutely! The noun for “harvest” in Sumerian is buru. It has a really detailed cuneiform sign (composed of the signs en and kar2):