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If it were just about Jordan I could ignore this last ridiculous comment. Tom Send a noteboard - 09/12/2009 03:56:47 PM
You wrote:

"Another possibility is association not with 'night' but with 'wind,' thus identifying the Akkadian Lil-itu as a loan from the Sumerian lil, 'air',[2] — specifically from NIN.LIL 'lady air,' goddess of the South wind (and wife of Enlil) —and itud, 'moon.'"

I knew this came from Wikipedia, but I had to check anyway. The "itud" portion is naked conjecture with no proper citation, and the part about the name coming from layla (Root L-Y-L) is from a source in the NINETEENTH CENTURY that has been out of date for over 70 years and thoroughly disproven. Furthermore, the author of the Wikipedia article doesn't know much about Sumerian. Sumerian HAD a word for Lilith. Let me quote from the Lexicon directly:

LIL(2) n. wind, breeze; breath; infection; haunting spirit (of a place); phantom, ghost; back or open country v. to infect adj. haunted

LIL(2)-LA(2) (plural -e-ne) wind or storm demon(s) Akk. lilu, lilium, lilitu(m).

Thus, we have incontrovertible proof that lilitu (an Akkadian female variant of lilu, by the way) comes from Sumerian lilla (the plural form would be pronounced lillane). The Sumerian lilla became Akkadian lilu. There are translations of Sumerian classics into Akkadian (of a religious nature) where this happens.

To clarify, the (2) indicates which symbol it is in the set of cuneiform symbols that can represent that particular sound.

You then said:

At the first link in the above search one John Alan Halloran has "iti6[UD.dNANNA]: moonlight" seemingly invoking both the moon and Inanna. Annoying fellow; he also maintains a "Sumerian Lexicon" here you might care to correct: http://www.scribd.com/doc/502645/Sumerian-Lexicon

Of course, there is no link whatsoever between lilitu and itud. You might as well have looked up LIL (3,5) "fool, moron" and combined it with ID, "river".

However, you looked up itud and then you saw a word near it - ITI (6) (with the determinative [UD.dNANNA]). Guess what? That's not about Inanna at all. It's about Nanna, the moon-god of ancient Sumer, who became the moon-god Sin in Akkadian. Inanna's name is a single cuneiform symbol that has nothing to do with Nanna. John Hayes, foremost Sumerian scholar in the US, says this about Inanna:

The reading of her name is much disputed; it is variously translated as Inana, Inanna, Innin and Ninni. It is usually interpreted as nin.an.a(k), "Lady of the sky/heaven". This is how the Akkadian scribes understood her name. Jacobsen thinks that Inanna was originally the "numen of the communal storehouse of dates". He says that the an-component of her name meant "date-clusters"...The sign for her name may represent a bundle of reeds.
Political correctness is the pettiest form of casuistry.

ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius

Ummaka qinnassa nīk!

*MySmiley*
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