Dingir

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dingir is the Sumerian for "deity". It is written as an ideogram in the cuneiform script. The sign at the same time expressed the syllable an, because it was in particular the ideogram for An, the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon. In Akkadian cuneiform, the sign could be both an ideogram for "deity" and a syllabogram for il, derived acrophonically from the Semitic for "god", ʾil-. In Hittite orthography, the syllabic value of the sign was again an.

The cuneiform sign is encoded in Unicode (as of version 5.0) at U+1202D 𒀭.

1 Sumerian
2 Akkadian
3 See Also
4 References

[edit] Sumerian

The Sumerian sign dingir originated as a star-shaped ideogram indicating a god in general, or the Sumerian god An, the supreme father of the gods. Dingir also meant sky in contrast with Ki which meant earth. The cuneiform version of the Sumerian sign is shown at the left.

The plural of dingir was dingir dingir.

[edit] Akkadian

The Akkadian sign dingir could mean:

the Akkadian stem "il-" meaning "god" or "goddess"
the god Anum
the Akkadian word šamu meaning "sky"
the syllable il
- a preposition meaning "at" or "to"
a determinative indicating that the following word was the name of a god

Dingir could also refer to a priest or priestess although there are other Akkadian words ēnu and ēntu that are also translated priest and priestess. For example, nin-dingir (lady divine) meant a priestess who received foodstuffs at the temple of Enki in the city of Eridu.^[1]

Some Akkadian myths, which read like the participants were gods, are less confusing if the dingir sign is translated "divine" rather than "deity" or "god". For example in Gilgamesh XI, lines 189,192:

"Then dingir-kabtu went aboard the boat... Standing between us, he touched our foreheads to bless us." This is clearly an act of a priest, not a god.