UCLA

The present dissertation investigates the root zu "to know" in the Sumerian texts of early Mesopotamia, ca. 2800-1600 B.C., with the aim of identifying its grammatical, syntactic and semantic characteristics. The root is treated across the Sumerian sources, but ultimately considered within the bilingual (Sumerian-Akkadian) situation of southern Mesopotamia. The adjectival and nominal forms of the root are also discussed, as well as their Akkadian counterparts. The analysis of the lexemes over a period stretching from ca. 2600-1600 BC offers interesting results in several categories (grammatical, literary, semantic), and contributes to discussions of the epistemological and practical implications associated with the concept of "knowing" in the Mesopotamian texts. While research into systems and categories of knowledge has been carried out in the field, no systematic lexical discussion of the verbal root meaning "to know" exists. This dissertation seeks to fill that lacuna.

The methods employed in the dissertation lie within the well-established principles of philological and lexicographical investigation. Chapter 1 introduces the subject and reviews previous studies. Chapter 2 treats the Sumerian root zu, elucidating its formal and literary (idiomatic) characteristics. Appendices A and B document the corpus of examples consulted. Chapter 3 then discusses the derived adjectives from the root zu, likewise noting formal and literary (idiomatic) characteristics. Appendices C, D, E and F document their respective examples. Chapter 4 turns to the Akkadian root idû "to know" in bilingual and monolingual texts, in order to investigate (idiomatic) Semitic influence. It further takes up the Akkadian adjectives corresponding to those in Sumerian discussed in the third chapter. Chapter 5 enumerates personal names in Sumerian and Akkadian that employ the root "to know." A concluding chapter sums up the evidence for the individual roots and lexemes and discusses their evolution, usage and correspondence within the scribal and linguistic settings of the different textual corpora and their historical period.