The Production of Soma.

a reply to: Anaana

Victor Sariandidi analysed soil and the contents of the bowls in which this soma was being prepared and those plants are what was identified, its what they were actually using rather then guesswork.

The true soma plant from which the divine soma flows is however nearer to hand

a reply to: Anaana

No i think you're right with regards to the general pattern of historical usage, the connection between Danube script/culture and the Proto-Cuneform of Uruk could perhaps be reinforced through a shared regard for the poppy.

P. Somniferum in Iberia: On the Iberian Peninsula, the early Neolithic sites of La Lámpara and La Revilla del Campo in the Meseta Norte plateau in central Spain gave evidence for early agriculture from the last third of the 6th millennium BC In this context several wheats and Papaver somniferum has been repeatedly documented. At Cuevo de los Murciélagos (Cave of the Bats, a Neolithic burial site located in Albuñol, Granada, in southern Spain) there is still more evidence of poppy usage. Thanks to the cave’s arid conditions, the round, woven grass bags that were buried with the dead have been preserved, along with their contents- large numbers of poppy capsules, which have been dated to more than 4 k.a. CalBC.

P. Somniferum in the Linearbandkeramik (LBK): Radiocarbon dates show that the LBK began in Hungary within the context of the Starcevo-Koros culture around 5, 7 calBC and already arrived at the Rhine about 5,5 calBC, suggesting a rapid but somewhat more gradual movement of ideas or people. LBK communities were well equipped with poppy seeds, beginning with Phase II of this culture. At this time in the Rhineland for example, seeds of Papaver somniferum have been found at five LBK settlements (Oekoven, Aldenhoven, Lamersdorf, Garsdorf and Langweiler).

Papaver Somniferum

A good article here by the way on the historical evidence within the Eastern Mediteranean.

originally posted by: zinc12
Victor Sariandidi analysed soil and the contents of the bowls in which this soma was being prepared and those plants are what was identified, its what they were actually using rather then guesswork.

No actually he didn't. His colleague on the excavation did the analysis. According to her results, none of the plant material recovered contained any traces of either cannabis or opium.

N. R. Meyer-Melikyan analyzed floral remains recovered from the monumental complex at Togolok 21. “The samples are floral remains: fragments of stems, often with leaves, pollen grains, anterophors, microsporangia, and scraps of megasporia skin and parts of fruit” (p. 203) which were found in large pithoi in rooms 23 and 34. She concludes that the remains belong to the Ephedra genus. Sarianidi is thus afforded the opportunity of following a number of scholars who believe that ephedra was the essential ingredient in the sacred drink, haoma or soma. This mildly intoxicating drink is referred to in the sacred books of the Indo-Iranians: the Rigveda and the Avesta. As previously noted pres-ence of ephedra at Gonur is taken by Sarianidi as further testimony for both Indo-Iranian and Protozoroastrian identity of the BMAC.

vedicilluminations.com... ence_in_Indian_History.pdf

So, Sarianidid, it seems is willing to invent evidence in order to support his wish for these sites to be related to the "Aryan Invasion".

A series of radiocarbon dates, collected by Fredrik Hiebert (1994) at Gonur on behalf of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, offers unequivocal evidence for the dating of the BMAC to the last century of the third millennium and the first quarter of the second millennium. A new series of radiocarbon dates from Tepe Yahya IVB-4, where BMAC imports were recovered, confirms the late third millennium dating for the beginnings of the BMAC (Lamberg-Karlovsky 2001). The BMAC, rather than dating to the second half of the second millennium, is to be dated to the end
of the third and beginning of the second millennium. Sarianidi (1999: 78) now writes “that the first colonists from the west appeared in Bactria and Margiana at the transition of the III-II Millennia B.C.” (p. 78). However, his insistence upon the late dating of Gonur to 1500–1200 BC continues to fly in the face of his own carbon-14 dates which average 300–500 years earlier.

Either way, I was incorrect, due to the "misunderstanding" of dates, these sites were not contemporary to the full extent of the Minoan trade networks, predating that expansion somewhat. The Lapiz Lazuli route from Afghanistan, that at that time ran into the tin route through the Zagros into the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia, did circumvent that region though.

a reply to: Kantzveldt

Unfortunately it contains a number of inaccuracies, most notably...

The poppy, the Babylonians and the Assyrians

Reginald C. Thompson [ 129] has no doubt that opium was known to the Assyrians in the seventh century B.C., and maintains that it was called " Hul Gil " and not, as was formerly thought, "stink cucumber ".

copoeia in existence. (Samuel Noah Kramer, " First Pharmacopoeia in Man's Recorded History ", American Journal of Pharmacy 126, 1954, pp. 76-84).

It appears that most of these tablets were written about 1700 B.C. A few are more ancient.

The tablet in question includes a considerable number of prescriptions collected by a Sumerian physician, and it is reported that it was written around the end of the third millenium B.C.

From 2225 B.C. the Sumerian territory was a part of the land of the Babylonians (The Assyriobabylonian State, which, in 607 B.C., was subjugated by the Persians).

He reinforces this view with the following quotation from a cuneiform tablet: "Early in the morning old women, boys and girls collect the juice, scraping it off the notches (of the poppy-capsule) with a small iron blade, and place it within a clay receptacle ". He adds: " It seems that nothing has changed in the method of collecting opium ".

Glenn Sonnedecker [ 130] mentions that the " Hul Gil " is found in earlier Sumerian tablets of the fourth millenium B.C., the expression meaning "plant of joy ", while Raymond P. Dougherty [ 131] believes that it denotes opium.

Terry [ 132] shares Thompson's view and adds that in the Assyrian Berbal the term Arat. Pa. Pa. occurs. This, according to Thompson, is the Assyrian name for the juice of the poppy and suggests that it may be the etymological origin of the Latin papaver.

The Eastern goddess Nisaba is often shown in Assyria and Babylon with poppies growing out of her shoulders. According to Professor Marinatos, [ 133] this deity survived until the archaic period of the Bœotian jars.

The poppy and the Persians

Neligan [ 134] states that " No great imagination is required to suppose that in the Sumerian or the early Babylonian period some neighbouring peoples living in the future land of the Persians were aware of so amazing a drug as opium. It is more than likely that the ancient Persians inherited this from Assyria or Babylon, just as they acquired a great part of their civilization by the conquest of those states. Yet it is only in the sixth century B.C., that opium is mentioned in any Persian text ".

In any case the cultivation of the poppy was very ancient. Opium was called theriac ( malidéh or afiuum) by the Persians. [ 135]

If you trace all the references cited, as I did when I first read this a few years ago, you will find that they all use the same, inaccurate source based on a misquoted, and misrepresented, correspondence with the translator of the Assyrian Plant List. The same error just keeps getting repeated.

a reply to: Anaana

Yes i already did as far as;

He reinforces this view with the following quotation from a cuneiform tablet: "Early in the morning old women, boys and girls collect the juice, scraping it off the notches (of the poppy-capsule) with a small iron blade, and place it within a clay receptacle ". He adds: " It seems that nothing has changed in the method of collecting opium ".

Which was from a Victorian periodical on everyday life in Northern India or some such, somebody got their wires crossed there, so i have never gone with that though it is commonly repeated that there was a tablet describing the production of Opium, not so.

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
a reply to: Anaana

Yes i already did as far as;

He reinforces this view with the following quotation from a cuneiform tablet: "Early in the morning old women, boys and girls collect the juice, scraping it off the notches (of the poppy-capsule) with a small iron blade, and place it within a clay receptacle ". He adds: " It seems that nothing has changed in the method of collecting opium ".

Which was from a Victorian periodical on everyday life in Northern India or some such, somebody got their wires crossed there, so i have never gone with that though it is commonly repeated that there was a tablet describing the production of Opium, not so.

Yeah, I forgot about that one

All the other references, although all extrapolating fallaciously, refer back to Kramer (I think it was). So all you have if five books (or whatever it is) quoting the same misquote. Goebbels is vindicated.

So the problem lies here with reference 129...

129

The Babylonians developed a great civilization as is evident from their very ancient monuments (cf. A. Tschirch, op. cit., 1933, I/III, p. 1190). A picture of this civilization is given by the Kujundschik library belonging to the neo-Assyrian period, and composed of 22,000 tablets of white clay. These were excavated by Layard and are now in the British Museum. They formed the Assyrian library of King Sardanapalus (Aschurbanipal, 668-626 B.C.) in his capital at Nineveh. Reginald C. Thompson studied the tablets ( Assyrian Herbal, London, 1924, pp. 46, 251, 261 and 269). He states that they are copies of older texts, deducing this from their similarity to the medical tablets found at Ashur and dated a few centuries earlier. In a catalogue of the 115 commoner plant drugs mentioned, opium occurs forty-two times and holds the thirty-third place as regards frequency of mention.

Thompson did not identify opium in the Assyrian plant lists, however all subsequent authors appear to have ignored that and taken Kramer's misinterpretation and misquotation over checking Thompson's work for themselves. Terrence McKenna, interestingly enough, didn't. People seem to want there to be opium in Ancient Mesopotamia despite the evidence indicating the contrary.

a reply to: Anaana

Yes it's odd you get the runaround with people referencing each other and end up with nothing, except the suggestion that a plant mentioned in the Nippur Old Drugstore Tablet through the ideogram Hul Gil, Plant of Joy could have related to Opium, though there's no contextual evidence to support that.

I think the suggestion is correct though because the iconography i consider relating to the production of an Opiate based drink relates to the cult of Ninshubur and she related to joy and the soothing of hearts, which seems tenuous but then the gateway into the E-anna/Kullaba district of Uruk was known as The Gate of Joy.

Given that what i have researched was centred upon Uruk it seems likely that the pleasure orientated complex of the E-anna was associate if not derivative of the earlier tradition.

Her minister Ninšubur spoke to holy Inana: "My lady, today you have brought the Boat of Heaven to the Gate of Joy, to Unug Kulaba. Now there will be rejoicing in our city

When she had …… the Boat of Heaven to the Gate of Joy at Unug Kulaba, it passed magnificently along the street. It reached the maiden's house, and she …… its place. …… the purified well, her principal well. Inana …… the divine powers which had been presented to her, and the Boat of Heaven, at the Ĝipar Gate. At the Agrun Chamber ……. Holy Inana …… the Boat of Heaven

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
a reply to: Anaana

Yes it's odd you get the runaround with people referencing each other and end up with nothing, except the suggestion that a plant mentioned in the Nippur Old Drugstore Tablet through the ideogram Hul Gil, Plant of Joy could have related to Opium, though there's no contextual evidence to support that.

That's it! It's the Hul Gil that is the problem. This discussion sums up the problem better than I could...

This article was written by Abraham Krikorian and featured in the Journal of the History of Biology. Krikorian benefits from the advice of E. Reiner on philological details. First, he starts off by sketching general estimates of the age of the use of Opium, moving soon to the local of Mesopotamia where reports of opium are estimated to be the earliest. It is very interesting to see Krikorian's report of just how many historians of botany have used information from Campbell-Thompson's work on this particular group of Mesopotamian plants to assert that opium was being used in 6000 BC, 5000 BC and so on (some not bothering to align their information with reasonable chronology we see, given that their conclusion are based on borrowed textual analysis.)

šamUKUŠ-RIM - (as we recall). The author makes it clear that in today's scholarship the reading would be quite different for these signs, today the determitive for plant is rendered ú. further ukúš is considered a determintive for a "cucumberlike" plant and so it is ukúš. So we have ú-ukúšRIM so far... But, as Krikorian further explains, that GIL, GIL2, HAB, and RIM are now understood to be all values of the same sign, and that scholarship today would in this context replace RIM and substitute ḫab. So it is supposed to be ú-ukúšḫab and not
šamUKUŠ-RIM.

It is a philological issue evidently.

The author comments next on the the plant of life:

As for ú-nam-ti-la (or ú-nam-til-la), which Thompson gives as "opium," it means literally "plant of life," and is one of the many Sumerian words (such as ú-ukúš-ḫab) corresponding to the Akkadian word irrû. Thompson said that he adopted "opium" following Haupt's assertion that irrû was the poppy plant. "

As the examination continues it becomes clear that different Assyriologists have both sided for and against the interpretation of irrû, some for 'opium' others against. Notable is the opinion of the CAD on irrû , which gives it as "a medicinal plant of the Cucurbitaceae family, possibly the colocynth."

Perhaps out of confusion or desperation, Krikorian sought advice from E. Reiner (a member of the editorial board of the CAD), and included her response in this article. Basically she states about the lexical lists which list varieties of ukúš that "we have no idea which variety is which", as for one variety that features in Campbell-Thompson`s argument, ti.gi.lum, she states "we have no idea what this means" - not particularly promising so far, though Reiner does state that ḫab means "stinking" and thus our mystery cucumber ú-ukúš-ḫab (earlier šamUKUŠ-RIM) , is "Stinking cucumber". Now which is that supposed to be and what does it have to do with nam.til3.la after all? Maybe nothing as Reiner explains: "I do not see what the NAM.TIL.LA plant (cited by Thompson) which is not ukúš, i.e. Cucurbitaceae ... has to do with either cucumbers or with the opium poppy."

is the nam.til3.la a cucumber or a poppy? probably not. And is it "safe" for either botonists to follow either Campbell-Thompson's dictionary or the CAD? Both Krikorian and Reiner agree not all of the time. We know lexical lists relate the plants or names ú-ukúš-ḫab, (Sumerian), irrû (akk.) and nam.til3.la - that the first is "stinking cucumber" , the second possibly is equivolent and CAD states "a medicinal plant of the Cucurbitaceae family, possibly the colocynth", and lastly nam.til3.la is used repeatedly in the Medical texts and had definite medicinal properties - but is not identified with the ukúš determinative and not likely a cucumber. The philological case for its identification with a poppy seems to me to be overturned and so we are left no closer to indentifying this plant.

enenuru.proboards.com...

Lindesmith, 1965, p. 207: the specific suggestion that HUL GIL means opium in Sumerian originally came from Yale Professor R P Dougherty, consulted during the translation by R C Thompson of the Assyrian Medical Tablets of the Royal Palace of Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum...The interpretation has since been disputed (Krikorian, A D “Were the Opium Poppy and Opium Known in the Ancient Near East, Journal of the History of Biology, Vol 8, No 1 (Spring 1975) pp95-114)” The General History of Drugs, By Antonio Escohotado, page 93

So, linguistically, neither opium nor stinking cucumber is a match. Personally the archaeology in abundance of it's use elsewhere, and the natural distribution of papaver somniferum is fairly self explanatory once considered. If I was to hazard a guess though, at what this "plant of life" could be, I would suggest that Aloe Vera is a better bet. Recent genetic studies indicate it originated somewhere around those parts and it's importance is certainly no less significant than opium.

a reply to: Anaana

They only really look at the flaws in the identification from the Assyrian tablets there though, i'd read their deliberations previously and the Assyrian consideration isn't worth mentioning, though certain plants remain unidentified due to a lack of sufficient context to identify them and i would expect the Opium Poppy to be in there somewhere, the helpful hint was to look for a Plant of Joy based on the Sumerian Nippur tablet, not a Plant of Life...

Wow!
You're thread is fantastic, thank you.
I'm glad someone bumped it to front page so I could see it.
Will deffinately check out your other works, (goodness! so much to read)

What is your field? If you don't mind me asking ..

Interpretation is acutely important.
Whether it's right or wrong, it enables other points of thought and opinion to be generated from it.

Excellent thread.

originally posted by: CRYDACDC
Whether it's right or wrong, it enables other points of thought and opinion to be generated from it.

Yes, but the right one is typically preferred to the wrong one.

I would prefer my gp's 'correct' interpretation of my colonoscopy to his 'incorrect' interpretation of it. Especially if his 'incorrect' interpretation enables thoughts and opinions contrary to what the truth says.

a reply to: CRYDACDC

Thanks and you're welcome, Art History is my general field and certainly as far as the case i've presented here goes this can be best made through understanding of the iconography and the genre as a whole, i like to understand why things were represented in a particular way and what they were trying to say...or just looking at the pictures is easiest.

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
a reply to: Anaana

They only really look at the flaws in the identification from the Assyrian tablets there though, i'd read their deliberations previously and the Assyrian consideration isn't worth mentioning, though certain plants remain unidentified due to a lack of sufficient context to identify them and i would expect the Opium Poppy to be in there somewhere, the helpful hint was to look for a Plant of Joy based on the Sumerian Nippur tablet, not a Plant of Life...

Sadly, I think, you misunderstood the discussion that they were having, and my previous posts for that matter.

There is no "plant of joy" mentioned on the "Sumerian Nippur tablet". The "plant of Joy" or "Hul Gil" was suggested by Dougherty as a possible translation to Thompson who decyphered the Assyrian Plant List and later discounted. Kramer, who translated with Levy the Nippur tablet, makes no mention of opium, the plant of joy or Hul Gil.

a reply to: Kantzveldt

This should, hopefully, better illustrate the situation...

A.R. Neligan, in The Opium Question, with special reference to Persia, London, 1927, says “The earliest known mention of the poppy is in the language of the Sumerians, a non-Semitic people who descended from the uplands of Central Asia into Southern Mesopotamia.” Neligan presumably got this information from Dr. R. Campbell Thompson, translator of the Assyrian Medical Tablets, taken from the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum. They date to the 7th century BC and are copies of older texts.

Professor R. P. Dougherty, in charge of the Babylonian Collection at Yale, claims that the Sumerian ideogram for opium was HUL GIL; “I should say that the basic meaning of the sign HUL is ‘joy,’ ‘rejoicing.’ GIL as a single ideogram represented a number of plants.” The ideogram cannot be dated definitely, but “probably goes back to the fourth millenium B.C.”

www.hoboes.com...

A number of his findings were revised in a posthumous publication, but his mistaken belief that the wild poppy, Papaver rhoeas L., produced narcotic substances persisted and has continued to mislead those who are unaware that morphine is not formed in this species. This has resulted in the widespread belief that opium was used 5000 years ago in Sumer. The situation has been further confounded by the suggestion that a third millennium BC ideogram on a clay tablet from the holy city of Nippur depicted HUL GIL, the plant of joy, this allegedly being the opium poppy. That opinion was originally expressed in a personal communication from a professor at Yale.

There is no evidence to support it.

The herbs cited in his posthumous publication that Campbell Thompson claimed to have identified include aloes, ammi (toothpick plant), anemone, anise, asafoetida, balm of Gilead, beetroot, black cumin, black hellebore, bitter or black nightshade, cannabis, carob, cassia, castor oil, cedar, chamomile, chasteberry, citron, colcynth, cornflower, cress, cumin, darnel ryegrass, date palm, elder, fennel, fig, frankincense, galbanum, garlic, ginger, heliotrope, henbane, hound’s tongue, laurel, leek, liquorice, mandrake, meadow saffron, mint, mustard, myrrh, myrtle, nettle, oak, pellitory, pine, pomegranate, poppy, rocket, rosemary, Syrian rue, saffron, squirting cucumber, styrax, sweet flag, sycamore fig, tamarisk, thistle, thorns, thyme, turmeric, white hellebore, winter cherry, willow and wormwood.

samples.sainsburysebooks.co.uk...

In the first quote...that "presumably"...awful lot of that going on. As you saw for yourself, the text that the paper you linked to claimed to be from the Nippur tablet was in fact lifted, wholesale, from a 20th century instructional manual, having no bearing on Sumer at all.

Early in each morning after an incision has been
made, old women, boys, and girls collect the juice by
scraping it off the wounds with a small iron scoop, and
deposit the whole in an earthen pot, where it is worked
by the hand in open sunshine, until it acquires a
thicker consistence. It is then formed into cakes of a
globular shape, about four pounds in weight, and laid
in little earthen basins to be further dried, the cakes
being covered over either with tobacco leaves or with the
leaves of the poppy; and there they are kept till dry.
These masses then constitute the opium of commerce.
The Indian opium is, as here described, sold in round-
ish masses, covered by leaves; while the Turkish
opium is in flatter pieces, also covered by leaves.

Such is the general mode of cultivating the poppy in
India, where the opium, or inspissated juice of the cap-
sule, is the chief object held in view. Where the culti-
vation of this plant, as in Europe, is directed more to
the production of seeds for oil than to that of opium,
the arrangements, as described by Mr. Young, are
nearly as follows...

archive.org... 44_djvu.txt

Fairly blatant.

originally posted by: noonebutme

originally posted by: CRYDACDC
Whether it's right or wrong, it enables other points of thought and opinion to be generated from it.

Yes, but the right one is typically preferred to the wrong one.

I would prefer my gp's 'correct' interpretation of my colonoscopy to his 'incorrect' interpretation of it. Especially if his 'incorrect' interpretation enables thoughts and opinions contrary to what the truth says.

Interesting choice of words, and your response here in this thread makes you a stalker.
Someone presents a different experienced prospective and you're all over it like a rash?
Perhaps you do need a doctor. Plenty of those are masons too, willing to alter results to help
people on their way quicker for a dollar .. sorry I mean brotherh***.

On topic Kantzveldt, it just goes to show what passionate research can unearth/discover.
Regarding the plant you mention, I believe there is also another for that pictoral depiction,
and has great significance which is normally missed by the general public, it is information not
shared outside a group normally.
What has been my experience is that the truth always comes out (fresher minds=fresher prospectives),
and because it was supposed to in the begining, not just horded and shared for personal or criminal
gain for the few, but to excell the many.
As it should be.

I can't wait to have somebulk time to read through your other threads,
thanks again for a great thread.

a reply to: Anaana

Again it just demonstrates Thompson over reached himself and statements such as There is no evidence to support it. in what was a general interest article relate only to the published criticism of his work and not the suggestion of Professor R. P. Dougherty, there is no guilt by association in this case.

So looking at what he suggested, here is the Nippur tablet, he suggested the sign Hul for Joy and the sign Gil for the plant, which is formed of the sign for a reed, Gi , and were the sign GIL is formed (GI over GI parallel or crossing)





And on the actual tablet GI over Gi followed by Hul perhaps...?



a reply to: CRYDACDC

Regarding the plant you mention, I believe there is also another for that pictoral depiction, and has great significance which is normally missed by the general public, it is information not shared outside a group normally.

Another...?

a reply to: Kantzveldt

I realise it is confusing, but Dougherty did not consult on the translation of the Nippur tablet. He had already slipped off this mortal coil by then. Kramer and Levy, both brilliant and gifted academics by all accounts, translated the tablet in the mid 1950s.

An anonymous Sumerian physician, who lived toward the end of the third millennium B.C., decided to collect and record, for his colleagues and students, his more valuable medical prescriptions. He prepared a tablet of moist clay, 3 3/4 by 6 1/4 inches in size, sharpened a reed stylus to a wedge shaped end, and wrote down, in the cuneiform script of his day, more than a dozen of his favorite remedies. This clay document, the oldest medical "handbook" known to man, lay buried in the Nippur ruins for more than four thousand years, until it was excavated by an American expedition and brought to the University Museum in Philadelphia.

I first learned of the existence of the tablet from a publication by my predecessor in the University Museum, Dr. Leon Legrain, curator emeritus of the Babylonian Section. In an article in the 1940 Bulletin of the University Museum, under the title "Nippur Old Drugstore," he made a valiant attempt to translate part of its contents.

But it was obvious that this was not a task for the cuneiformist alone. The phraseology of the inscription was highly technical and specialized, and the cooperation of a historian of science was needed, particularly one trained in the field of chemistry. After I had become curator of the tablet collections in the University Museum, I often went longingly to the cupboard where this "medical" tablet was kept and brought it to my desk for study. More than once I was tempted to make another effort at translating its contents. Fortunately I did not succumb. Again and again I returned it to its place and awaited the opportune moment. One Saturday morning in the spring of 1953, a young man came into my office and introduced himself as Martin Levey, a Philadelphia chemist. A doctorate in the history of science had Must been conferred on him, and he asked if I knew of any tablets in the Museum s collection that he could help with from the point of view of the history of science and technology. Here was my opportunity.

rbedrosian.com...

Sorry, I can't see the credit for the text that you provide, could you provide a link or source please?

a reply to: Anaana

No he didn't consult when Kramer had a go at translating the tablet later but he has to have been basing his opinion on his own observations of that tablet, the source for the signs was here, the examples i suggested from the middle column second row of the Tablet itself here.

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
No he didn't consult when Kramer had a go at translating the tablet later...

Kramer did not have a go at translating, he and Martin Levey did translate it. The whole thing.

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
but he has to have been basing his opinion on his own observations of that tablet,

Even if he did, that doesn't make his observations correct.

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
the source for the signs was here,

Although you have edited it out, that clearly states that HUL = cucumber (p40-41). It also clearly states that it can also be used, with very slight variations according to context, to mean, "bad, to destroy, to be bad smelling". Hence the tenuous translation of "stinking cucumber", I presume.

Similarly, while GI (p36) can indeed be used to mean "reed", it can also mean "to be entwined", to turn, return, to go around or to change status, which would seem to me, in the context of prescriptive medicine, just as likely to appear in the text.

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
the examples i suggested from the middle column second row of the Tablet itself here.

Could you perhaps provide a slightly fuller translation in order to show the context in which Hul Gil is being used?

a reply to: Anaana

Right as far as the Hul of the Order of the Stinking Cucumber goes that's a completely different sign,



So something does stink as that's not the sign Dougherty was concerned with, the derivation of Gil from Gi will always retain some association with the reed, and thus can be used in conjunction with reed like plants, it also will have association with scribes and sages, when two Gi signs are crossed that can relate to the infinitely complex, and reed brakes held symbolic importance within religious inner sanctums relating to primeval origins of practise, also as the divide between this world and that of the spirits, so some nice associations there.

Dougherty only suggested the usage of the Hul sign related to joy, it can readily be thus associated with the heart and happiness but at this point i seriously doubt it had anything to do with cucumbers the name for which was UKUS,and would require extensive elaboration from anyone crazy enough to think it did as to why, i know it's there as a suggested association but you definitely can't have both a cucumber and a stinking one at that, different signs, so why is anyone trying to say you can...?

Perhaps the confused association of Hul with Ukus simply arose here...



A boat laden with cucumbers

I'm not going to start attempting further translation as my point was only to demonstrate that Dougherty didn't simply pull his suggestion out of a hat, might be an interesting project for the Enenuru board though.