Used in:
What does the Book of Mormon state?
- Sheum was not translated into English
At face value - Did sheum exist in the New World?
Statement
- Sheum refers to an unknown plant
Assessment
- Without a translation, it is not possible to make an assessment
Additional Material
- Reflections on Joseph Smith and the Holy Scriptures, Val Sederholm
- As long ago as 1973 students of the Book of Mormon sought to identify the grain sheum with what appears to be the very same word in the Akkadian language, or East Semitic. After all, what could be closer to Zeniff's sheum than sheum?...In his "Glossary of Akkadian Words," Professor John Huehnergard comments on the correct Akkadian word for barley or grain, um:...Sum[erian]. lw.? always written with log[ogram] SHE, e.g., acc. SHE-am or SHE-a-am for am; also written either SHE.UM or SHE. IM , regardless of case) 'barley, grain'; note: until very recently this word was read in Akkadian as sheum, and appears as such in both dictionaries and all text publications up through 1990" (John Huehnergard, A Grammar of Akkadian, 528)...Sheum was a misreading: there is no such word in Akkadian...A better candidate for Zeniff's grain appears in an Egyptian term (shm') dating from Old Kingdom texts onward. The Woerterbuch defines the word as Upper Egyptian grain (used for making bread) and notes that it was called both it shm' (grain of Upper Egypt) and simply sm' ('Upper Egyptian' grain)...Upon entering the languages of the Sahel (or doubtless prior to that time), the word undergoes a metathesis, which is not an uncommon thing for Egyptian words ending in ayin (a gutteral consonant). What that means is that the ayin and the mim trade places: shm' becomes sh'm. The center of the word, when rendered into English, has to account for the metathesis: she'ym and she'um both work. And that's how we get sheum.
- http://valsederholm.blogspot.com/2011/04/and-with-neas-and-with-sheum-mosiah-99.html
- Commentary: I respect people knowledgeable in languages. I offer the following from the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1964, Fourth Printing 1998. It provides the term for barley as Se'u and listed in the dictionary under "S," not "U." Also from the dictionary, the last bullet is the word barley used in context from an Akkadian text and written in the dictionary as "SE-um." This reference and Val Sederholm's explanation seem to be in agreement regarding how Akkadian was written in translated texts and how translated texts have evolved over time.
- Se'u s.; 1. barley, grain, 2. grain (a unit of measure), 3. pine nut; from OAkk. on; Sum. lw.; wr. syll. and SE (SE.AM beside se-a-am TCL l 21:7ff., BE 6/252-54:3,5,21, and passim in these three texts). se-e SE = se-um A VII/4:36, also Recip. Ea A 173; se-e SE = se-u (var. se-im) Sb I 190, see MSL 4 206; Se = se-um Ai. V A3 14'; [se-e] [SE] = [se-u]m.MES S2 Voc. AD 4'; se = se-um.MES se.A = se-um ub~bu-[lu] Ebeling Wacenpferde p. 37 Ko 12:
- uttatu (uttetu, ettetu) s. fem.; 1. edible grain (wheat or barley), 2. kernel, 3. grain (a unit of measure), 4. (a mole or pimple);
- alu sa SE-um ipparsusu ut-te-tum issaqlusu - city whose barley has been cut off, whose grain had to be weighed
