Note 24 — Chapter I

The ideogram Ki-en-gi, by which the name of Sumer, or more correctly Shumer, was expressed, already occurs in the texts of Eannatum, Lugal-zaggisi and Enshagkushanna (see Chaps. V. and VII.). It has generally been treated as an earlier proper name for the country, and read as Kengi or Kingi. But the occurrence of the word ki-en-gi-ra in a Sumerian hymn, where it is rendered in Semitic by mâtu, "land" (see Reisner, "Sum.-Bab. Hymnen," pl. 130 ff.), would seem to show that, like kalam, it was employed as a general designation for "the Land" (cf. Thureau-Dangin, "Die sumerischen und akkadischen Königsinschriften," p. 152, n.f.). The form ki-en-gi-ra is also met with in the inscriptions of Gudea (see Hommel, "Grundriss," p. 242, n. 4, and Thureau-Dangin, op. cit., pp. 100, 112, 140), and it has been suggested that the final syllable should be treated as a phonetic complement and the word rendered as shumer-ra (cf. Hrozný, "Ninib und Sumer," in the "Rev. Sémit.," July, 1908, Extrait, p. 15). According to this view the word shumer, with the original meaning of "land," was afterwards employed as a proper name for the country. The earliest occurrence of Shumerû, the Semitic form of the name, is in an early Semitic legend in the British Museum, which refers to "the spoil of the Sumerians" (see King, "Cun. Texts," Pt. V., pl. 1 f., and cf. Winckler, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1907, col. 346, Ungnad, op. cit., 1908, col. 67, and Hrozný, "Rev. Sémit.," 1908, p. 350).