# Akkadian: Daughter



## Jamal31

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone knows the Akkadian cuneiform son for daughter? I know the word for son is bīnu (Cuneiform sign), but have had trouble finding the Cuneiform and transliteration for 'daughter'.


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## anthox

It is _bīntu. _Can't find the cuneiform, sorry.

Sources:
CAD: The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD)
Online Akkadian Dictionary: "bintu"


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## Jamal31

Thanks very much, @anthox.

Do you know whether the following Cuneiform combinations correctly make up the word 'bīntu'?

https://i.imgur.com/QWE7L6T.png
https://i.imgur.com/dedFxEA.png


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## anthox

I'm afraid I know next to nothing about world formation in cuneiform. It strikes me, however, that depending on the time period, there may have been multiple ways of writing the same word, and that there isn't necessarily a 1-to-1 correspondence of sign to syllable. Remember that cuneiform was borrowed from the Sumerians, and that sometimes the logographic value of the symbol was used, and sometimes the phonetic. The presence of "ligatures" or multiple signs compacted together tends to further complicate things.

I've found in Kogan's "Genealogical Classification of Semitic," p. 102 (see preview in Google Books),  that _binu _or _bunu _(son) and _bintu _or _buntu _(daughter) are "sparsely attested" in Akkadian, meaning they occur infrequently in the extant literature, primarily in late texts (p. 79), and may be West Semitic borrowings rather than indigenous Akkadian words. On p. 79, he gives the standard equivalent of _binu _as _maru _("son"), for which the cuneiform is 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





 according to the Online Akkadian Dictionary.

The feminine counterpart to this appears to be _mārtu, _meaning "daughter" or "girl." The cuneiform given for that is 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




.

Definitely check out the Akkadian Dictionary, most likely it can answer your questions, and you can always cross-check it with the CAD or other online resources.


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## Jamal31

Thanks again, Anthox.


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## Flaminius

Akkadian was in use for about two millennia and you expect a lot of variations in words as well as script.  The two signs that *Anthox* has provided are in Neo-Assyrian script (1000 BCE onward) and denote a word ideographically in accordance with the Sumerian script representation.  At the earliest stage of the script, it must have looked like this  xx [transcription: DUMU.MUNUS or DUMU.SAL].

[WR fora cannot display cuneiform fonts] so, here is the image file from an Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary entry:
ePSD _dumumunus_ (literally "female offspring/son"; daughter)

Since DUMU.MUNUS is Sumerian or logographic at best, there is no knowing how a given instance of the word was meant to be pronounced by an Akkadian speaker.  Still, you will see that the dictionary explains it is a match for Akkadian _mārtu_.  This means there are bilingual texts or glossaries that match the Sumerian _dumumunus_ to the Akkadian _mārtu_.

Some more pages from ePSD:
Akkadian sign list for B: No entry for _bintu_.  There seems to be no or little bilingual texts that map _dumumunus_ to _bintu_.
Akkadian sign list for M: cf. _mārtu_, _māru_

_A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian_ is useful for assessing historical distributions of _bintu_ and _mārtu_ (legenda in first few pages).
CDA
p. 44
_bintu_ O/jB, MA
_bīnu(m)_ OAkk, jB, NA in PNs [PN is for personal name; I cannot prove anything but the persons bearing _bīnu_ might have been West Semitic speaking.]

p. 48
_buntum_ OA

pp. 198,9
_mārtu(m) _OAkk, OA(lit.), OA, jB, NB, NA
_mārūtu(m) _OA, MA; status of son [A derivative means that the word was in active use.]

While both words with variations were in use from very old, the attestations of _mārtu_ are spread extensively in history and the word looks slightly more productive.

_The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago_ quotes texts using _mārtu_.
CAD M1 (s.v. _mārtu_) shows how the word was spelled out in tablets and inscriptions.  While it recognises that _mārtu_ was a possible reading for instances where the texts read DUMU.MUNUS, it lists syllabic spellings; ma-ar-tum, mar-tum.

Finally, here are two sign lists that you can pick up syllabaries to write out _mārtu _like Akkadian speakers did.
Akkadian Sign List
List of Neo-Assyrian Cuneiform Signs


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## Jamal31

Thanks very much, Flaminius, your post was very insightful. However I am looking for the spelling of 'bīntu' in particular in order to reconstruct the Arabic ' بِنْت ', not so much to identify the common Akkadian word for 'daughter'.  Wiktionary has a page for the Proto-Semitic 'bin-', which shows two characters apparently for the Akkadian spelling of the word, but did not provide anything on the page for the  Proto-Semitic 'bint-'. I tried to check for the characters provided under 'bin' in the Akkadian and Neo-Assyrian cuneiform list, but apparently they don't exist... I am now more confused than ever


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## Flaminius

Look up _bintu_ in CAD B, and you will find the word syllabically spelt out as; _bi-in-tum_.  The source of this entry is:
Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, “The First Tablet of _malku = šarru_ together with Its Explicit Version,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 83 421ff.

One of the four primary sources Kilmer used for _bintu_, one had a line art in Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative.  CDLI has three images for tables with what to be transliterated as bi-in-tum/tu, all of which are from copies of a glossary compiled in the Neo-Assyrian period.  Maybe there are older attestations but I could not find them this time.  So, all I can offer is how _bintu_ was syllabically spelt in the Neo-Assyrian period.

Neo Assyrian Sign List matching
syllabary, MesZL no., justification
bi, 358, http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P274541
in, 261, http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P345986
tu, 86, http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P274541
tum, 354, http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P349843

By the same procedure you can check that one of the ways to spell _bīnu_ is _bi-i-nu _or_ bi-in-nu._ The two new syllabaries can be found here.  Justification for _x-i-nu_ is this and _bi-i-nu_ is clearly visible in this but I am not sure if this is Akkadian or the word means "son."  Honestly, I have no idea why the current edition of Wiktionary spells the word with ŊEŠTUG.nu.  For _Malku = Šarru_, see Wikipedia (s.v. lexical lists).


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