Aš (cuneiform)

The cuneiform Aš sign, is found in both the 14th century BC Amarna letters and the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Epic, it has the following meanings, besides aš:

aš

dil

ina

ṭel

AŠ

Some special considerations for a single "cuneiform sign" are as follows. In Egyptian hieroglyphs, the space for a group of signs (in cuneiform, a group of individual strokes), is called (quadrat)-block. Among cuneiform signs, only a handful of signs (specifically the individual 'strokes', horizontal, vertical, "wedge", 'half-strokes', etc.) are found in single usage. For aš specifically, (the full-length, horizontal stroke) its highest usage in the Epic of Gilgamesh is for the preposition ina (for in, into, etc.; confer for a specific "ina" usage (by Kovacs), Gilgamesh flood myth#Alternative translations). The specific usage numbers for the sign's meaning in the Epic is as follows: aš-(4), dil-(3), ina-(284), ṭel-(1), AŠ-(1). The high usage as the preposition may be for space considerations, but it should be considered that the Epic of Gilgamesh was also a "training document" for scribes, over hundreds of years, so the multi-functioning of signs may also have been in issue, (one cuneiform sign substituted for the preposition: i-na, of two signs.)