The tablet of plants (1)

Text
The 17th tablet of the lexical series Harra = hubullu deals with plants. In it, the acrographic principle applies in the first section, where each plant name begins with the Sumerian word ú, ‘herb’. In the second section, the names are not preceded by ú, but followed by sar, ‘plant,’ the postposed class mark for such garden plants as vegetables, and other cultivated plants. The Greeks also make a distinction between botánē ‘simple’ (medicinal plant) and lachanón ‘vegetable’. Within a section no classificatory principle is discernible, except that varieties of the same species, whether botanically accurately classified or not, are by orthographic necessity enumerated together, as for example the alliaceae, whose names in Sumerian are composed with the element sum ‘garlic’ and a descriptive element, such as sum.sag.dili ‘one-headed garlic’, cf Greek μονóκλωνος (Papyri Graeci Magici 4.808).

Sources (list of abbreviations)
Harra = hubullu 17
Papyri Graeci Magici 4.808

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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