What 𒋁 means
Context decides which reading fits. Sumerian sign lists record 𒋁 as ŠEŠ₂, with readings including šeš₂, “to anoint,” and še₈, “to weep.” It also appears in longer spellings such as adkin (“meat”) and pašeš (“priest”); those words use 𒋁 as one part, so the standalone glyph is not a complete English translation.
The ŠEŠ₂ reading is attested in Early Dynastic IIIb records and recurs in later Mesopotamian eras: Old Akkadian, Ur III, Old Babylonian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic. Cuneiform signs worked as parts of a writing system: their value depended on the word and spelling, not on one fixed picture-like caption.
In later styles, the outline of 𒋁 can converge with SIKI.LAM, a sequence of two other signs. That visual overlap does not make the sign and sequence interchangeable.
Why does 𒋁 look different in different fonts?
Cuneiform fonts can show legitimate historical forms. Regional and period-specific outlines vary, as do lapidary forms (cut into stone) and cursive forms (written by hand). A Unicode chart gives a representative outline; a font made for Ur III or Neo-Assyrian writing may draw 𒋁 differently.
Who writes 𒋁
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Don't confuse it with
2
𒋠𒇴 This is the two-sign sequence SIKI.LAM. In later styles its outline can converge with 𒋁, but the sequence is not automatically the same reading.
Questions people ask
1Why does 𒋁 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
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How to type or find 𒋁
- Also called
- shesh2 · shesh 2 · šeš₂
- Search it as
- Sumerian shesh2 · cuneiform shesh2 · SIKI.LAM · anoint · weep
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𒋁\122C1Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.