who cited, for example, the following very common interdialectic variations: Eme-ku gir = Eme-sal meri, “foot”; Eme-ku ner = Eme-sal sher, “ruler”; Eme-ku duga = Eme-sal zeba, “knee,” &c. Such phonetic and dialectic changes, so different from any of the Semitic linguistic phenomena, are all the more valuable because they are set before us only by means of Semitic equivalents. Certainly no cryptography based exclusively on Semitic could exhibit this sort of interchange.
It should be added here in passing that the geographical or tribal significance of these two Sumerian dialects has never been established. There can be no doubt that Eme-sal means “woman’s language,” and it was perhaps thus designated because it was a softer idiom phonetically than the other dialect. In it were written most of the penitential hymns, which were possibly thought to require a more euphonious idiom than, for example, hymns of praise. It is doubtful whether the Eme-sal was ever really a woman’s language similar in character to that of the Carib women of the Antilles, or that of the Eskimo women of Greenland. It is much more likely that the two dialects were thus designated because of their respectively harsh and soft phonetics.[1]
2. Sumerian has a system of vowel harmony strikingly like that seen in all modern agglutinative languages, and it has also vocalic dissimulation similar to that found in modern Finnish and Esthonian. Vocalic harmony is the internal bringing together of vowels of the same class for the sake of greater euphony, while vocalic dissimulation is the deliberate insertion of another class of vowels, in order to prevent the disagreeable monotony arising from too prolonged a vowel harmony. Thus, in Sumerian we find such forms as numunnib-bi, “he speaks not to him,” where the negative prefix nu and the verbal prefix mun are in harmony, but in dissimulation to the infix nib, “to him,” and to the root bi, “speak,” which are also in harmony. Compare also an-sud-dam, “like the heavens,” where the ending dam stands for a usual dim, being changed to a hard dam under the influence of the hard vowels in an-sud.
3. Sumerian has only post positions instead of prepositions, which occur exclusively in Semitic. In this point also Sumerian is in accord with all other agglutinative idioms. Note Sumerian e-da, “in the house” (e, “house,” + da, “in,” by dissimulation), and compare Turkish ev, “house,” de, “in,” and evde, “in the house.”
4. The method of word formation in Sumerian is entirely non-Semitic in character. For example, an in determinative vowel, a, e, i or u, may be prefixed to any root to form an abstract; thus, from me, “speak,” we get e-me, “speech ”; from ra, “to go,” we get a-ra, “the act of going, ” &c. In connexion with the very complicated Sumerian verbal system[2] it will be sufficient to note here the practice of infixing the verbal object which is, of course, absolutely alien to Semitic. This phenomenon appears also in Basque and in many North American languages.
5. Sumerian is quite devoid of grammatical gender. Semitic, on the other hand, has grammatical gender as one of its basic principles.
6. Furthermore, in a real cryptography or secret language, of which English has several, we find only phenomena based on the language from which the artificial idiom is derived. Thus, in the English “Backslang,” which is nothing more than ordinary English deliberately inverted, in the similar Arabic jargon used among school children in Syria and in the Spanish thieves' dialect, the principles of inversion and substitution play the chief part. Also in the curious tinker’s “Thary” spoken still on the English roads and lanes, we find merely an often inaccurately inverted Irish Gaelic. But in none of these nor in any other artificial jargons can any grammatical development be found other than that of the language on which they are based.
7. All this is to the point with regard to Sumerian, because these very principles of inversion and substitution have been cited as being the basis of many of the Sumerian combinations. Deliberate inversion certainly occurs in the Sumerian documents, and it is highly probable that this was a priestly mode of writing, but never of speaking; at any rate, not when the language was in common use. It is not necessary to imagine, however, that these devices originated with the Semitic priesthood. It is quite conceivable that the still earlier Sumerian priesthood invented the method of orthographic inversion, which after all is the very first device which suggests itself to the primitive mind when endeavouring to express itself in a manner out of the ordinary. For example, evident Sumerian inversions are Gibil, “the fire god,” for Bil-gi; ushar for Sem. sharru, “king,” &c.
It is, moreover, highly probable that Sumerian had primitively a system of voice-tones similar to that now extant in Chinese. Thus, we find Sumerian ab, “dwelling,” “sea”; ab, “road,” and -ab, a grammatical suffix, which words, with many others of a similar character, were perhaps originally uttered with different voice-tones. In Sumerian, the number of conjectural voice tones never exceeds the possible number eight.
It is also clear that Sumerian was actually read aloud, probably as a ritual language, until a very late period, because we have a number of pure Sumerian words reproduced in Greek transliteration; for example, Delephat = Dilbat, “the Venus-star”; Illinos = the god Illil = Bêl; aidô = itu, “month,” &c.
In view of the many evidences of the linguistic character of Sumerian as opposed to the one fact that the language had en grafted upon it a great number of evident Semitisms, the opinion of the present writer is that the Sumerian, as we have it, is fundamentally an agglutinative, almost poly synthetic, language, upon which a more or less deliberately constructed pot-pourri of Semitic inventions was superimposed in the course of many centuries of accretion under Semitic influences. This view stands as a connecting link between the extreme idea of the Halévyan school and the extreme idea of the opposing Sumerist school.
Literature.—Radau, Early Babylonian History; Lenormant, Études accadiennes, ii. 3, p. 70; Eberhardt Schrader. Keilinschriften u. das Alte Testament, ii. 118 sqq., Keilinschriften u. Geschichtsforschung, pp. 290, 533; Weissbach, Zur Lösung der sumerischen Frage; T. G. Pinches, “Language of the Early Inhabitants of Mesopotamia,” in Journ. Roy. Asiatic Soc. (1884), pp. 301 sqq.; “Sumerian or Cryptography,” ibid. (1900), pp. 75 sqq., 343, 344, 551, 552; article “Shinar” in Hastings’s Dict. Bible, iv. 503–505; Halévy, Journal asiatigue (1874), 3rd series, vol. iv. pp . 461 sqq.; Comptes rendus, 3rd series, vol. iv. p. 477; 3rd series, vol. iv. pp. 128, 130; Journal asiatique, 7th series, vol. viii. pp. 201 sqq.; Recherches critiques sur l’origine de la civilisation babylonienne (Paris, 1876); J. D. Prince, Journal of the American Oriental Society, xxv. 49-67; American Journal of Semitic Languages, xix. 203 sqq.; Materials for a Sumerian Lexicon, with grammatic introduction (Leipzig, 1905-1907). Compare also the material cited in the footnotes above, and note the correspondence between Brünnow and Halévy in the Revue sémitique (1906). (J. D. Pr.)
SUMMANUS, according to some, an old Sabine or Etruscan deity; the name, however, is Latin, formed by assimilation from sub-mānus (cf. mane, Matuta), signifying the god of the time “before the morning.” His sphere of influence was the nocturnal heavens, thunderstorms at night being attributed to him, those by day to Jupiter. Summanus had a temple at Rome near the Circus Maximus, dedicated at the time of the invasion of Italy by Pyrrhus, king of Epirus (278), when a terra-cotta image of the god (or of Jupiter himself) on the pediment of the Capitoline temple was struck by lightning and hurled into the river Tiber. Here sacrifice was offered every year to Summanus on the 20th of June, together with cakes called summanalia baked in the form of a wheel, supposed to be symbolical of the car of the god of the thunderbolt. In Plautus (Bacchides iv. 8, 54) Summanus and the verb sum man are are used for the god of thieves and the act of stealing, with obvious reference to Summanus as a god of night, a time favourable to thieves and their business. The later explanation that Summanus is a contraction from Summus Manium (the greatest of the Manes), and that he is to be identified with Dis Pater, is now generally rejected.
See Augustine, De civitate dei, iv. 25; Ovid. Fasti, vi. 729; Festus,
