I know Sumerian is regarded as a language isolate with no known relatives, which to me sounds ludicrous as all humans are related ultimately and threads can be traced through most modern languages to several hypothetical Proto-languages. Even so, nothing is lost forever, not even Ur and Nineveh, or Göbekli Tepe, unearthed after what is it, 11,000 years? I believe that comparative linguistics coupled with comparative literature, archaeology, genetics, etc. can unearth similar evidence of humanity’s deep past.
Has anyone considered that Sumerian may exhibit evidence of some linguistic overlap with Austronesian and therefore Polynesian languages?
Given the plethora of nebulous, watery themes in primeval world mythology (Egypt: Nūn, Mū; Mesopotamia: Tiamat, Apsu) I’ve been comparing cultures with rich watercraft and maritime traditions as well as evidence of navigation and the vocabulary related to watery things and the likeliest candidates seem to be Austronesian in particular, of which Malay, Indonesian, various Filipino dialects, etc. belong and as a later development, Polynesian dialects.
One thread I’ve followed centers on the word “anak”, which means “person, human, child” in the contemporary vernacular. The only precursor modern scholarship has arrived at for this word is from hypothetical Proto-Austronesian. According to what is now my custom I compared possible Sumerian morphological filter to “anak” as AN.AK (𒀭𒀝) and arrived at a word that, if related to Sumerian, seems to mean something related to being “made by / for / in the image of An, the sky god”, or “to build sky”, “to construct heaven”, “or heaven-built”, "placed in heaven". Apparently AN.AK (𒀭𒀝) in the written form exists and is rendered as Nabû (𒀭𒀝) in Akkadian, a patron god of various civilized affairs. This would be related to the Semitic root [n-b] and Hebrew navī (נָבִיא) “prophet”, which incidentally sounds like Sanskrit NĀVI (नाव) “boat”.
I bring Sanskrit up on account of the Euphratic substrate theory currently floating about in the field of ancient languages from the near east as mentioned by Samuel Noah Kramer in "The Sumerians - Their History, Culture, and Character", The University of Chicago Press, 1963 (p. 41) and Gordon Whittaker in "The Case for Euphratic" (Bulletin of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences, volume 2, number 3, 2008). There are a number of other words shared in Hebrew, for example, with Sanskrit. And since Mesopotamian flood narratives are also intimately connected with prophets arriving by sea in the form of fish-men, it seems natural that words related to wisdom / sages should also be associated with fish or “mer-people”. This is the case with Austronesian and the Polynesian branch of linguistics that I am most familiar with being a hobby preoccupation of mine. One Oceanic term for an old man (a wily veteran warrior) is “old fish”, or “I’a matua” / “ika makua”.
Another notion related to AN (𒀭) is the alternative written form of Anu’s name A.NE (𒀀𒉈), which bears directly upon a term in the Austronesian family of languages taking the forms of ANE / ANAI / ANAY all referring to the “termite”, “white ant”, which in metaphorical language refers to woodcarvers of all kinds and forms the basis of the word for “man” TĀNE / KĀNE and “brother” GANE, formations of TA+ANE. Interestingly, ÁNAÁI in Diné (Navajo) means “elder brother”. “Unlikely connection”, I’m told until one considers that the Navajo word for “wooden walking stick, stick, staff; digging stick” is GISH, which is what ĜIŠ (𒄑) both sounds like and means. Talk about coincidences... An Austronesian cognate exists here between Asia and the Americas in a cluster of root words all cognates in the forms of KISI / KIHI / ‘ISI / TIVI / KIWI (like the Māori word for a sub-tribe or “branch”).
I believe that when this root word is reduplicated it forms what would be the recognizable word for “reed wall”. With a modest knowledge of Atrahasis, Gilgamesh, and the other flood accounts depicting Enki / Eā whispering (išiš) to partitions of two kinds GI.SIG (𒄀𒋝) / GI.SIG₇ (𒄀𒅊) it becomes hard to miss the profound similarities and persistent structure of this theme and phonology.
KISI-KISI means “lattice” in Austronesian, “dragonfly” in Tongan on account of its stick-like body, as KIHI-KIHI “butterflyfish” (Chaetodon) in Hawaiian / ‘IFI’IFI in Sāmoan on account of the pronounced lattice-pattern in the scales of the species of FISH. And here we are back to a fish.
Could Enki / Ea / I'a, The Old Fish himself, have been whispering to a “fish”, another old man of the sea, an errand-runner, a sailing sage to deliver news of the death-decree made by the gods?
On that note, I wonder if there may be some wordplay, punning in usage with: "wall-wall" and "fence-fence" EGAR-EGAR, GI-SIG-GI-SIG
"farmer-official" and "fishes"
Akkadian: igāru-igāru (𒂍𒋞𒂍𒋞) "wall-wall"; Sumerian: e₂-gar₈-e₂-gar₈ (𒂍𒋞𒂍𒋞); incidentally 𒋞 is also SIG₄, so why not e₂-sig₄-e₂-sig₄
Akkadian: ikkaru-ikkaru (𒀳𒀳) "farmer-official"; Sumerian: engar-engar (𒀳𒀳) Akkadian: kikkišu-kikkišu "reed-fence-reed-fence"; Sumerian: gi-sig₇-gi-sig₇
Akkadian: ?; Sumerian: ki-zi[ku₆]-ki-zi[ku₆] or GIŠ.ŠEŠ[ku₆]-GIŠ.ŠEŠ[ku₆] which are terms for identifying types of fishes of an as of yet unidentifiable species
Also, revisiting the words for “arrow”, “archery”, “bow”, “reed shaft”, which are also present in most of the aforementioned linguistic idioms: BAN / BANA / PAN / PANA (𒉼)Hawaiian: PANA “arrow, archery, bow”Tongan: FANA “arrow, bow, to shoot”Sāmoan: FANA “arrow, bow, to shoot”Fijian: VANA “to shoot”, one alternate in the “Qashti” form of “bow” becomes in Navajo ‘AŁTÍÍ’ (ʔalshtī ʔ), compared to Hebrew /q-š-t/ (קֶשֶׁת) keshet “bow”, Akkadian qaštu.
The list of potential cognates is slowly growing.
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