ellum (N) “sesame oil” | G.1. oil & its ressources

Commentary

The translation of the term by the dictionaries as “sesame oil” is based on the Akkadian equivalence ellum (written el-lu) for i3.giš in lexical lists. This equivalence appears in one Old Babylonian lexical list (MAH 15850 + MAH 16061 + MAH 16078, MSL 09, p. 124-127 MSL 14, 121-122 08; Sollberger, JCS 05 (1951)) and lexical lists from later periods (K 00260+K 04239+K 04235+K 10093 from Niniveh). The word also occurs in a medical text (BAM 4 393).

An Old Babylonian letter from Ur, UET 5 073, also attests to the fact that ellum refers to “sesame oil”: a slave let fall the sesame (written by the word šamaššammū), which means that the sesame plants reached sufficient maturity and the seeds were lost, but the shortfall in sesame oil (written ellum) still had to be delivered.

The term ellum could be etymologically related to English “oil”, German “Öl” and French “huile” through the Greek elaion and Latin oleum, meaning “olive oil” or “any oil substance” (see the comments in Stol 1985: 122).

Linguistic evidence also suggests that the term originated in the Indus Valley and was similar to early Dravidian names for sesame, el or ellu (Bedigian 1985: 163; Soutworth 1995). It was certainly transferred to Mesopotamia through sesame exchange by way of both overland and seafaring merchants in the Early Bronze Age (see for these exchange Bedigian 1985: 93-101).

Logogram: i3.giš

Link to Sumerian glossary: i3 ĝeš

AHw. 205: ellu(m) (gutes) Sesam-Öl

CAD E, p.106: ellu sesame oil (of a specific quality)

CDA 70: ellu(m) sesame oil (of a specific quality)

Bibliography

  • AHw = Soden, Wolfram von (1956–1981): Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
  • Bedigian 1985 = Bedigian, Dorothea (1985): Is še-giš-ì Sesame or Flax?, in: Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 2. Cambridge, 159-178.
  • Bedigian 1998 = Bedigian, Dorothea (1998): Early History of Sesame Cultivation in the Near East and Beyond, in: Damania, Ardeshir; Qualset, Calvin O.; Valkoun, Jindřich; Willcox, George (eds.), Origins of Agriculture and Crop Domestication. Proceedings of the Harlan Symposium 10-14 May 1997, Aleppo, Syria. Aleppo: International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, 93-101.
  • CAD = Gelb, Ignace J.; Landsberger, Benno; Oppenheim, A. Leo; Reiner, Erica; Roth, Martha Tobi (eds.) (1956-2010): The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Chicago and Glückstadt: Oriental Institute.
  • CDA = Black, Jeremy; George, Andrew; Postgate, John Nicholas (22000): A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian. 2nd corrected printing. Santag 5. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
  • Soutworth 1995 = Soutworth, Franklin C. (1995): Reconstructing Social Context from Language: Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Prehistory, in: Erdosy, George (ed.), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 258-277.
  • Stol 1985 = Stol, Marten (1985): Remarks on the Cultivation of Sesame and the Extraction of its Oil, in: Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 2, 119-126.

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