Possession and existence: describing belonging and being in Akkadian

English has several ways to describe the fact that something belongs to someone ("the man's dog", "her daughter") or that several things belong together ("a pile of barley", "a barley pile"). Akkadian has a long and a short way of describing possession too. On this page we also look at how Akkadian describes how objects are, and ascribes identities to them, without using the verb "to be".

When you have read this page, you might like to test your understanding by trying Cuneiform exercise 2.

Belonging: the long and the short way

The easiest way to express belonging in Akkadian is to use ša, "of", followed by the genitive case. So we can write kalbum ša awīlim, "the man's dog" (literally "the dog of the man"), and našpakum ša šeʾim, "a pile of barley". The first noun—the possessed object—can be in any case, gender or number, depending on its function in the sentence, but the second noun—the possessor—must always be in the genitive.

However, just as "the dog of the man" sounds a bit odd in English, kalbum ša awīlim isn't much used in Akkadian either. It is found mostly when the possessed thing is qualified by an adjective, or when there is more than one of them: kalbum peṣûm ša awīlim, "the man's white dog", or kalbum u šurānum ša awīlim, "the man's dog and cat".

The short alternative to ša, "of", is to take the case ending (-um, -am, or -im) off the possessed thing: šurān awīlim, "the man's cat", or našpak šeʾim, "the pile of grain". However, where English reverses the word order so that the possessor comes first in the short form ("the dog of the man" becomes "the man's dog") in Akkadian the possessed thing always comes first (našpakum ša šeʾim becomes našpak šeʾim). In this short form, the possessed thing is always followed immediately by its genitive possessor—which is why Akkadian uses the longer alternative, with ša, when it is necessary to separate possessor and possessed.

Constructing constructs

This caseless form of the noun is called its construct or bound form. The basic idea is pretty simple, but removing the case ending sometimes leaves some tidying up to do. If we shorten kalbum ša awīlim we are left with *kalb ša awīlim with an impossible consonant cluster at the end of the first word. An extra vowel is added to solve this problem: kalab ša awīlim. Confusingly, there are different solutions depending on the number and gender of the noun. Here are the most common of them:

The rules about constructs can seem rather confusing at first. But most of the time we read rather than write Akkadian. It is far more important and useful to be able to recognise and translate constructs properly than to reproduce every single different variety of them to order.

Possessive suffixes

Finally, it's not alway necessary to repeatedly name the possessor. In fact it can sound rather confusing: "the man walked his dog" sounds much more sensible than "the man walked the man's dog". Where in English we use a separate word "his" (a possessive pronoun), Akkadian adds a suffix to the noun, like this: kalabšu "his dog".

Nouns which would otherwise be in the nominative or accusative case mostly just add the suffix onto the construct form: kalabšu "his dog", while genitive nouns drop the final -m from their case ending but keep the genitive -i-: ana kalbišu "to/for his dog".

There are some exceptions, however:

Here are the commonest possessive suffixes; beware the fact that "my" takes different forms:

These suffixes can be used with any noun. But sound rules about adjacent dental and sibilant consonants mean that the final t of the feminine noun and the initial š of the third-person suffixes together become ss: šarrassunu "their queen". In the plural, however, feminine nouns keep their final case vowel: šarrātušunu and šarrātišunu, both "their queens".

States of being

In English we can use an adjective with the verb "to be" in order to make a sentence: "the dog is black" or just "it is black". Akkadian does this too, except that there is no verb "to be". Instead, it modifies the adjective to the stative form. For the third person singular ("he"), this looks a lot like the construct form of a noun: kalbum ṣalmum "the black dog" becomes kalbum ṣalim "the dog is black". Equally, it is legitimate just to write ṣalim "it is black". Other persons, genders, and numbers add suffixes as follows:

Note how the vowel between the second and third consonants is squeezed out of forms with suffixes, as explained on the Sound rules page.

Stative endings can also be used with nouns to say, for instance, kalbāku "I am a dog".

Ascribing identity with -ma and ul

In English we often use the verb "to be" to identify someone or something: "it is the king" has a rather different meaning to "he is the king". Akkadian uses the suffix -ma to do this, attached to a noun with its nominative case ending: šarrumma, "it is the king", or šarrātumma, "they are the queens". Akkadian also uses -ma together with the stative for emphasis: kalbākuma, "I really am a dog!"

It's also useful to know how to say what something (or someone) isn't. Akkadian uses ul "not" to do this: ul kalbāku, "I'm not a dog!", ul šarrumma, "it's not the king". As these examples show, ul always immediately precedes the word it qualifies.

But—as we shall see in more detail when discussing sentence structure—Akkadian has two words for "not". The other is lā, which is used to negate adjectives. Compare the noun phrase awātum (lā) kīnum, "a(n un)true word", with the stative sentence awātum (ul) kīn, "the word is (un)true".

Emphasising identity and possession with independent pronouns

Although Akkadian usually uses person suffixes for identity it also has a set of words analogous to English "I" and "me". These independent pronouns are used for emphasis and to refer back to someone or something already mentioned: anāku ul āššatka "I am not your wife!" or awīlum šū "that man (just mentioned)".

Here are the most frequently found Akkadian independent pronouns:

Content last modified on 02 Apr 2024.

Eleanor Robson

Eleanor Robson, 'Possession and existence: describing belonging and being in Akkadian', Knowledge and Power, Higher Education Academy, 2024 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/CuneiformRevealed/Akkadianlanguage/Possessionandexistence/]