Note 87 — Chapter III · THE SUMERIANS

Hitherto read A-da-pa. But the character PA had the value of mu when it signified “man,” according to a tablet quoted by Fossey, Contribution au Dictionnaire Sumérien-assyrienne, No. 2666, and in writing early Babylonian names or words the characters with the requisite phonetic values were selected which harmonized ideographically with the sense of the words. Thus out of the various characters which had the phonetic value of mu that was chosen which denoted “man” when the name of the first man was needed to be written. The Semitic Adamu, which M. Thureau Dangin has found used as a proper name in tablets from Tello of the age of Sargon of Akkad, was borrowed from the Sumerian adam, which signified “animal,” and then, more specifically “man.” Thus in the bilingual story of the creation we have (l. 9) uru nu-dim adam nu-mun-ya, “a city was not built, a man was not made to stand upright,” and a list of slaves published by Dr. Scheil (Recueil de Travaux, etc., xx. p. 65) is dated in “the year when Rim-Anum the king (conquered) the land of ... bi and its inhabitants” (adam-bi). See above, p. 76.