Big man

This is Naram Sin, The Great king of Akkad, trampling his enemies...Appropriately, the Great King is depicted as a Big Man much bigger than his dead enemies...

Akkadians and their Great Kings, succeeded Sumerians as the rulers of Mesopotamia...And in Sumerian the word for "King" (see capital K) was  "Lugal" which comes from "lú" (man) + "gal" (big) and literally means a Big Man...

Now here is something "weird"...

In Serbian, the word for people is "ljudi", from Proto-Slavic *ľudьje (“people, men”)...

In Serbian, one of the words for big is "golem",  from Proto-Slavic *golěmъ...Cognate with Lithuanian "galėti" (to be able) and Lithuanian "galià"(power, might)

So coincidence that the roots are the same in Sumerian and Slavic? Again? Just like the roots for all these unimportant words:

Scribe, Tablet, Mind, Breath, Life, Grain, Teeth, Sickle

Just to be clear, Sumerian is a language isolate and has nothing to do with Slavic languages or any other Indo-European language for that matter...So what's going on here? Who borrowed all this from whom? Where? When? Or is this just an incredible coincidence...

Monastirište

Are local legends true? And is Monastirište, a plateau in Crna Trava area of Eastern Serbia, which has always been treated by the local villagers as a sacred place, rally the location of an Early Christian monastery?

Well yes 🙂 The geophysical data showed the church walls at the depth of 2,8 meters and many other walled structures located even deeper... 

Short documentary in Serbian:

I just love the fact that archaeologists get "surprised" every time they find an ancient fortress at the place local villagers call "gradina" or "gradište" or "grad" (all meaning city, fort, place where city, fort once stood)...

Or when they find an ancient church or monastery at the place which local villagers call "crkvina", "crkvište" (both mean church, place where church once stood) or "manastir", "manastirište" (both mean monastery, place where monastery once stood)...

Pop = Djed?

The main column (stake) which supported the roof in old Slavic houses was once called "djed" (grandfather). I talked about this in my post "Baba the main beam that supports the house"...

What is interesting is that in some parts of Serbia (for instance Levče area) this column was also called "pop" (priest).

The word "pop" comes from Old Church Slavonic попъ (popŭ), which from Ancient Greek παπάς (papás) meaning father...Today this means "father of the congregation" but originally this literally meant "the father of the family"...

In Serbia even today it is the oldest man in the family that officiates all the family rituals, which are many. Basically he is playing the role of the family priest...

Now in Serbian the word "baba" (grandmother) also means mother, birth giver, any female ancestor... I talked about this in my post "Baba's day"...

I wonder if the word "djed" (grandfather), once also meant father, any male ancestor...Why? Well, because of an interesting fertility ritual recorded in the Levče area of Serbia.

There is a belief there that a woman which wants to give birth to a male child has to put a placenta from the last birth on the "pop" column, pillar and say "I put you on the priest (pop) so that the priest (pop) can ask god to give me a male child".

Serbian ethnographers and anthropologists believe that this (djed/pop) column once played the role of a house idol, the representation of Dabog, the ancestral deity of all the Serbs, the tribal "djed" (Great, Great, Great...grandfather) of all.

So after Christianisation, this "djed" (male ancestor) column became "pop" (father, male ancestor) column?

Possibly...

Or maybe this comes from the fact that in the Medieval time the local "heretical" Slavic priests from the Balkans were known as "djed" and "starac" (both meaning elder), and "pop" is the literal translation of this term?

The description of the ritual from "Srpski Mitoloski Recnik - Grupa Autora"

Scribe

I would like to talk about Sumerian writing: Cuneiform. Actually about their words for "write" and "tablet, document"...

Cuneiform emerged in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BC to convey the Sumerian language, "a language isolate which has no relationship with any other language"...It is one of the earliest known systems of writing...

Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms...

In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract, eventually turning into symbols...

The pictograms (later symbols) were were cut on clay tablets, using a blunt reed for a stylus. Basically, cuneiform writing was "making marks on clay using chiseling technique"...

Now, the word for writing in sumerian was "sar, šar" written using this symbol:

And the word for tablet, document was "dub" written using this symbol:

Unsurprisingly the word for a scribe was "dub-sar" (tablet, document-writer):

And scribes learned their trade in "e-dub-ba-a" house of documents writing 

Here is a very interesting thing. 

Sumerian document (dub) was clay tablet (dub) with patterns, symbols gouged, chiselled, written (sar, šar) into it...

In Serbian, the word for chiselling, gouging is "dub" and the word for "making patterns, symbols" is "šar"...

So Sumerian dub-šar (scribe) literally means "one who gouges, chisels patterns, symbols" in Serbian...

Eee what? 

How can such important words in Sumerian, language isolate, have roots in Serbian, totally unrelated IE language, which only appeared after Sumerian language died out?

Now this must be a complete coincidence, a fluke. But unfortunately this is just another example where we find Slavic words related to very important words found in Sumerian. 

Like words related to knowledge...You can read more about this in my post "Um"

Or

Like words related to grain agriculture...You can read more about this in my posts "Breath" and "Sickle"

I don't have an explanation for this madness, but...Have a look at this: 

The Vinča symbols, sometimes known as the Vinča script are a set of symbols found on Neolithic artefacts from the Vinča culture (6th to 5th mill BC) from Central Europe with its centre in Serbia...

And these are the Tărtăria tablets, discovered in 1961 at a Vinča culture site in the village of Tărtăria, in Romania. Originally dated to c. 5300 BC. 

Looks familiar?

Here is the best bit. Apparently archaeologists are now proposing much later date, based on the signs!!! And are dating tablets to 2,750 BC-3,300 BC, when Sumerian proto-writing, otherwise known as dub-šar :), was developed...

Now to conclude. I actually believe that Sumerian is a language isolate. And is not related to IE languages, including Serbian. But It is annoying that we keep finding these isolated, important words in Sumerian with IE roots...Why? As I said I have no explanation of this madness...

But we can't just ignore all this...Right?

Sumerian dictionaries:

Sumerian cuneiform English dictionary ed. Peter & Tara Hogan
Sumerian Lexicon Version 3.0 by John A. Halloran
The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary