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How did a picture of a hand come to represent the Sumerian syllable shu?
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cuneiform
An account of barley distribution, probably from Uruk, Mesopotamia, c. 3100–2900 bce; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
The transition of the hand symbol to represent the Sumerian syllable shu occurred through the application of the rebus principle.
Initially, the pictograph of a hand was used as a logogram to denote the concrete object "hand," which is shu in the Sumerian language. Because Sumerian words were largely monosyllabic, the writing system evolved to use these pictographic shapes to evoke the underlying sound of the word rather than just the object itself. By utilizing this phonetic value, the sign for "hand" could be employed to represent the syllable shu in any required context, allowing for the expression of abstract ideas and grammatical elements that could not be easily depicted through drawings alone.1