Cuneiform Sign Sheg9

𒊾 is a Sumerian cuneiform sign with recorded values linked to an animal word and to frost. An Ur III administrative tablet uses it in an entry about a suckling fallow deer.

Text symbol

Also called: ŠEG₉ · SHEG9
Search it as: sheg 9 · sheg9 meaning · sheg9 animal · sheg9 frost · sheg9 bar · šeg₉.bar
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What 𒊾 means

Its listed values include an animal word and a word for frost. The Sumerian sign list records several values for ŠEG₉. In a tablet, its language and neighboring signs help select the reading that fits.

Cuneiform began as an accounting and administrative system around 3500–3000 BCE, then developed into a way to write languages. A 2004 proposal for encoding cuneiform cites early references from Uruk, an ancient city, and two administrative occurrences of ŠEG₉.

A surviving administrative tablet from the Ur III period—the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur—uses the sign in a record about a suckling fallow deer. That specific entry shows one use in context, not a translation for every occurrence.

Why can Sheg9 have several readings?

The label names the form; the passage gives it a reading. Specialists use ŠEG₉ as a catalog label for the written sign. A translator then considers the tablet’s language and nearby signs to decide how that occurrence functions.

Scholarly and archival: identify the cuneiform sign with ŠEG₉, then read its value from the tablet’s context.

Use the neighboring signs and language before assigning a translation to 𒊾.