Breasts depicted in Sumerian:

a database
by Jennifer Ball © May 3, 2011

Dumu - Child
rotated 90° cw

Breasts are depicted in a variety of ways in cuneiform. This is a database of every example of
breasts in cuneiform. The first example will be the dumu depiction, as seen above. Dumu means
“child” in Sumerian more than 28,000 times. Could this word mean “of mother”? “De” means
“of” or “belongs to” in Latin-based languages. In Chinese, “de” with no accent means “of” and
it functions as a possessive; “de2” means “get, obtain”; “di4” means “bull’s eye”: a metaphorical
description of possession. These meanings are all very close because possession, as we know, is
9/10s of the law. Imagine what possession meant before laws existed or even a fair adjudicator to
enforce them.

Cuneiform and definitions are from http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/index.html : “The Penn-

sylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project is carried out in the Babylonian Section of the University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. It is funded by the National Endow-
ment for the Humanities and private contributions.”

Breasts depicted in Sumerian: a database. Rev. 25 May 2011 9:11 AM © Jennifer Ball, May 3, 2011 - 1
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 Tur - Small
rotated 90° cw

Tur—the next grouping—uses the same graphic as dumu, and the meaning is often breast-related,
but this character is defined as “small” by the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary. “Small” is a

Breasts are important, euphemism for “breasts,” but the meaning is “small.” Euphemism and metaphor are the ways in
which humans could use pictures to stand for sounds and ideas: how we can read.

so there are a variety of

“Breasts as a metaphor” is a common motif because when something is important, eve-
ryone wants to be a part of that importance. Food was key in the beginning of man, and milk
allowed for civilization to get a jump start. The ratio of a woman’s breasts to her physical size as

words that signifiy or are measured with any other primate shows how significant the increased proportion meant to our
culture’s survival. Comparing primates to all mammals shows that there was a evolutionary pref-

associated with them:

erence for the teats to enlarge, reduce in number to two, and to move to a more visible position.
The eyes and the breasts have as close a relationship as do lips and breasts. Eyes of the male see
breasts of the female and produce offspring whose lips receive life from those same mammaries.

ama, eme, didi, dumu, This underpinning of sustenance shows up in all scripts as a duple usually, a mound or t-shape
repeated. The evidence of “breasts” being used metaphorically is seen in Sumerian words that

ga, gaba, gala, genna,

signify for diminution (child, junior, offshoot, cub, small), kinship, and an association with milk.

nar, and tur.

No doubt there are more.

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 Note the relationship of rodents to descendants, and snakes to in-laws. Jared Diamond writes, “A
slight change in pitch converts the meaning of the [New Guinea tribe] Iyau word meaning ‘moth-
er-in-law’ into ‘snake.’” (The Third Chimpanzee, page 150.) Interesting that all these cultures
would consider in-laws and children vermin.

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 Note: gala means “lamentation singer.”

Note the relationship of toad to instrument.

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 Nam is a common preposition that signifies for “determined order” or “fate,” but it re-
ally seems to function as “officially recognized as.” It doesn’t seem to have a meaning far from
“named.” In the examples below, it would seem that these terms mean “officially recognized as
‘youth,’” “named supervisorship,” and “named heir.”
Other terms which use the dumu/tur cuneiform depiction:

Genna would seem very close to “gene” and “genesis.”

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 Could “diddly squat” have
Even the word for “staircase” has a breast depiction, perhaps because children grow up like stairs
ascend. Humans are big on metaphor. It’s why we can take scratchings, like cuneiform or letters,
and extrapolate meaning from them. For more on stairs in “‘Tail’ = ‘Kun’ in Cuneiform.”

come from the Babylonians?

Didi - Small
rotated 90° cw

This means “official smallness.” Economics ruled the Sumerians, and everything was accounted
for, even smallness.

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Didi meant “small” in cuneiform. When things are small, you might have several, like chil- “Ama” means “mother”: a person known to have breasts and
dren or wives. When you have several of something, they lose their importance and become,
“insignificant, trifling,” as Oxford English Dictionary defines, “diddly” admitting that the milk.
etymology is “uncertain.”

Ama - mother
rotated 90° cw

A detail of Meritamun’s This could be a symbolic representa-

breast from a partial statue tion of a breast as a kind of sack. The
found near Ramesseum. star is the sign of a god or goddess.
Eighteenth dynasty, (c. Perhaps people who had milk were
1539-1292 BC). Chronicle special. Could the star be a nipple?
of the Queens of Egypti, Could the two horizontal lines on the
Joyce Tyldeseley, page left side signify for two breasts? This
157. character is in mother, goddess, and
priestess, as well as other words for
women.
From the Smithsonian website: “There’s certainly evidence that women had tattoos on their bod-
ies and limbs from figurines c. 4000-3500 B.C. ....Although it has long been assumed that such
tattoos were the mark of prostitutes...I personally believe that the tattooing of ancient Egyptian
women...functioned as a permanent form of amulet during the very difficult time of pregnancy
and birth. This is supported by the pattern of distribution, largely around the abdomen, on top of
the thighs and the breasts...”1

1 Cate Lineberry. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/tattoo.

html#ixzz1DaDf1log

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 Perhaps this is why linguists believe the letter “B”
comes from “house.” Because the house was the
women’s chamber and they were often impris-
oned or enshrined there (see “cella” below).

Ama - chamber
rotated 90° cw

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From the UCLA Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative:
In the definition below, the an star appears to be
http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/tools/SignLists/protocuneiform/archsigns.html
synonymous with the nursing nar woman. This
would suggest:

star = milk

By itself, the star is pronounced an. From an to ama isn’t that far away. Stars and milk are both
white, but milk would have mattered more to early humans. A woman who let one nurse might
be a goddess. It might be grotesque to us, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

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 Nar = Nurse?
This looks like a woman holding up her breast. This woman is
“nar” 643 times. Could this word mean “nurse”? Perhaps “musi-
cian” is a euphemism. To the Sumerians, goddesses were musi-
cians with milk.

musician, goddess, prostitute, fox

rotated 90° cw

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 The definition below doesn’t have the nar/ka’a/lib/lul women, but it is a homonym to the word
meaning “ax” above , and it means “dear.” In English, to be “smited” means both to be killed and
to be in love.

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 The roots of “lactate”
Chinese, Sumerian, and Ancient Egyptian all re-clarify
characters ostensibly to make their characters have clearer defi-
nitions. Sometimes this makes the character more confusing.
The character for finger in Chinese includes both a hand and a
From the UCLA Cuneiform Digital Library semblance of a finger. There is a lot of replication or “over-clari-
Initiative: http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/tools/Sign- fying” in language. Could the word “lactate” be a re-clarification
Lists/protocuneiform/archsigns.html
of the Akkadian laga “milk”? “Milk” in Greek was gala, just a
flip of the syllables from laga. In Sumerian gala meant “female
lamentation singer” and “vulva.” In Ancient Egyptian, irtt meant
“milk” or “to make tt.” The word “lactate” could be re-clarified
with two terms for milk: laga teat. So “lactate” could mean
“milk tit.”

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