Cuneiform Sign Ma

It has several readings; alone, it is not a complete English translation.

The cuneiform MA sign is read with its neighboring signs and the language being written. The modern spelling “ma” is a scholarly transliteration, not an English translation.

Sign forms identified as MA appear in proto-cuneiform material from Uruk IV and III, two early phases named for the Mesopotamian city of Uruk, in the late fourth millennium BCE. Proto-cuneiform is an early stage of writing that predates later cuneiform styles. Cuneiform first recorded goods and transactions, then expanded to poetry, scholarship, and other languages. Scribes used lexical tablets—lists of signs and words—to teach and preserve readings.

Is 𒈠 a word or a syllable?

It can stand for a sound or a whole written word.

Sumerian sign lists give MA word values such as “ship,” “house,” “fig,” and “and,” alongside the syllabic value transcribed ma. These are distinct conventional readings; the written word and its context tell you which applies.

Akkadian scribes also used the sign in syllabic spellings, where one sign represents a syllable, and as a Sumerogram—a Sumerian sign convention used to write an Akkadian word or measure.

The sign occurs in 14th-century BCE Amarna letters, clay-tablet diplomatic messages, and in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian literary work preserved in cuneiform. These examples show use in different kinds of texts, not one English label.

Why does 𒈠 look different in cuneiform fonts?

The code point identifies the sign, not one timeless drawing.

Ancient cuneiform was written on clay and stone in styles that changed by period and region. Unicode treats these differences as variants of the same encoded sign, so fonts can arrange the wedges differently without changing which character is represented.

That means this screen glyph is not a tracing of one tablet. The proto-cuneiform sign identified as MA and later MA forms belong to a historical sign tradition, but their outlines are not interchangeable; compare forms from the same period and language.