Caveat: speech created hatred

300px-Sumerian_26th_c_AdabIt's a little-known fact that I once took a graduate course in the Ancient Sumerian language. It was all part of my general interest in obscure and difficult languages, which continues unabated to this day.

I had to memorize archaic hieroglyphs, cuneiform logographs and vocabulary meanings, not to mention the bizarre Sumerian grammar (the agglutinative nature of which I am sometimes reminded of when I look at Korean).

I don't remember much of it – Sumerian is just not something one has much occasion to use.

Somehow I ran across a proverb that was allegedly Sumerian, the other day, and I wanted to find out if it was just an empty attribution or if it was really from Ancient Sumer. So I researched it a little bit. Apparently it's the real deal. I really wanted to find an image of the cuneiform inscription, but my googling skills have proven inadequate to that task. So here is the proverb and the transcription I found (at this website):

A heart never created hatred; speech created hatred.

Segment A: 1.105
71. šag4-ge šag4 ḫul gig nu-ub-tu-ud
72. dug4-ge šag4 ḫul gig ib2-tu-ud

Above right is an image of the archaic style (c. 3000 BC) I mostly focused on in my class but it's utterly unrelated to the quoted proverb. Below, likewise unrelated, is an image of the later, more refined style of the civilization at its height (c. 2000 BC – and note that the refined style below is just as likely to be Akkadian as Sumerian – the civilization was bilingual and used the same writing system for both languages, which were linguistically unrelated – actually, that's similar to the situation between Korean and Chinese in the pre-modern era).

Cuneiform

Caveat: the last and greatest of human dreams

It's a few days late, but I just now ran across it.

Warning: if you are unfamiliar with Burroughs, be forewarned – you might want to reconsider listening to his "prayer" (which is not a musical track, either, by the way – this is poetry being read by the author).

Burroughs was a great American writer in my humble opinion – one of the greatest – but he was undeniably deeply profane and gallingly liberal (or perhaps more correctly he was a type of libertarian – he was pro-drug but also radically pro-gun, for example, and though he despised "lawmen" he didn't seem to have much of a problem with big government in principle).

His iconoclasm comes across plenty clearly in this short bit.

William S. Burroughs, "A Thanksgiving Prayer."

Text:

For John Dillinger, in hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day, November 28th, 1986.

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches.
For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the memories – all right let's see your arms!
You always were a headache and you always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

Burroughs, as a writer, was perhaps one of the single most influential in my life, though you wouldn't know that by looking at my lifestyle or my other tastes and interests. I am the junkie-that-never-was.

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

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