Scriptural Mormonism: Hildegard Lewy on še'um (cf. "Sheum") as an Old Akkadian Cereal Name

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Hildegard Lewy on še'um (cf. "Sheum") as an Old Akkadian Cereal Name

THE DESIGNATIONS of cereals occurring most frequently in the Old Assyrian texts are uṭṭutum (gen .: uṭṭitim, acc .: uṭṭatam), še'um, aršâtum, and GIG. . . . In the letter ICK 13, on the other hand, we read in II. 5 f., of "12 ½ minas of silver, or 1 hundred sacks of še'um," which ḫabuala, the shepherd of the princess, owed the writer of this letter. . . . The ideogram GIG, even as the Akkadian terms še'um and aršâtum, denotes a variety of grain. (Hildegard Lewy, "On Some Old Assyrian Cereal Names," Journal of the American Oriental Society 76, no. 4 [October-December 1965]: 201, 202)