Cuneiform Sign Ma₂

It is the Sumerian sign for “boat” or “ship,” read ma₂. Cuneiform served record keeping as well as literature, and this sign named watercraft in practical and literary texts. Boats also appear in journeys and processions.

Its lexical record spans Early Dynastic IIIa through Hellenistic records. Cuneiform signs took shape and changed within scribal practice, as writers adapted them to clay tablets, styluses, and different languages.

How did it work across languages?

The boat meaning persists, but the sign can take a different reading. Sumerian ma₂ means “boat” or “ship.” Compounds narrow it to a barge, freight boat, or sailor. MA₂ as an Akkadian logogram can stand for eleppu (“ship”), so the written sign represents an Akkadian word rather than a Sumerian reading.

A lone character is not a translation by itself: surrounding signs and the text’s language tradition determine its value. In a modern message, it usually reads as a cuneiform reference or decoration.

Why does 𒈣 look different in fonts?

Different outlines can be one sign in different font styles. Unicode gives this character one encoded identity, while fonts can draw it in styles associated with periods and regions, such as Ur III, Old Babylonian, or Neo-Assyrian. Different outlines may therefore represent the same sign.

The subscript ₂ in the scholarly spelling ma₂ distinguishes this sign value from other signs transliterated ma; it is not decoration. Do not infer a historical period from a font’s outline unless the font or source identifies the style.