Cuneiform Sign UN

Its reading depends on the Sumerian text around it.

The sign can write ug₃ (“people”), kalam (“land”), or the syllable un inside a verb. Uppercase UN in a scholarly sign list names the sign; it does not force every occurrence to be read un. Determinatives—small signs that mark a word’s meaning group—and nearby words help identify the intended value.

A school exercise from the Old Babylonian period in ancient Babylonia, dated about 1725 BCE, teaches the readings un and kalam. Cuneiform developed in southern Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE from word signs pressed into clay, then signs also came to represent syllables. An administrative tablet from Ur, ca. 2900–2700 BCE, uses UN in a personal name in a list counting men.

Why can cuneiform fonts show different forms?

Font style and character mapping can both change the displayed form.

Cuneiform signs changed across periods and regions, and fonts can follow different historical styles. A shape alone may not identify a sign’s date or reading; consider the text’s period and transliteration too.

Unicode 16.0 corrected a mismatch between the reference glyphs for UN and UN GUNU, the label for another sign. Older fonts or data may still show their shapes swapped.