# A-MA (ʿamma) > people, kinfolk—social/kinship term A Linear A word in the Linear A Lexicon. The reading is a proposal and carries its tier. - Reading: ʿamma - Confidence: Candidate. A comparison worth testing; the evidence is thin or the word is rare. - Root: [\*ʕamm-]() 'relative' 1, 'uncle' 2, 'ancestor' 3 - Kind: Kinship - Language: Semitic - Signs: A (a) · MA (ma) ## Compared forms - : *Hebrew ʿam* — Hebrew ʿam "people, nation" (HALOT 837), Ugaritic ʿm "lineage, ancestors" (DULAT 160), Akkadian ummānu "people, army" (CAD U/W 106), Phoenician ʿm "people" (Tomback 255) ## Attestations - [HS Zg 1](): A-MA - [MA 1b](): A-MA \*47 - [ZA 7b](): A-MA ## Commentary HS Zg 1, a stone object, has A-MA alone; MA 1b has A-MA · *47 over QE-DE-MI-NU; ZA 7b has A-MA, the rest broken. Three attestations, at three sites. ʿamma 'people, kinfolk': Heb. ʿam 'paternal uncle; kin, clan; people' (HALOT 837). On MA 1b, A-MA stands beside QE-DE-MI-NU (Qēdmīnu 'primordial, eastern', cf. Kadmos), a kinship term beside a Semitic personal name, as in the NWS names ʿAmminadab (Exod 6:23; Num 1:7; HALOT 844) and ʿAmmišadday (Num 1:12). Ebla has the name a-ma ʿamma 'the uncle' (Pagan 1998, row 672). Plain A writes the ʿ, as in A-MA-JA ʿAmmaya and A-PA₃-DI ʿAbdī; *306+MI writes the same name element with *306. Rivals: ʾammat- 'cubit' and ʾam(a)t- 'maidservant', on the same two consonants. See *306+MI. ## Same root - [A-MA-WA-SI]() (ʿAmma-wāṣiʾ) - [A-MI-DA-U]() (ʿAmmī-dāʿ(u)) - [\*306+MI]() (ʿAmmī) - [A-MA-JA]() (ʿAmmaya) ## References - Reading: di Mino - Tomback: Tomback, Richard S. (1978), A Comparative Semitic Lexicon of the Phoenician and Punic Languages. Scholars Press (SBL Dissertation Series 32) - HALOT: Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob; Richardson, M. E. J. (trans. and ed.) (1994), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vols. I–IV. E. J. Brill, Leiden · New York · Köln - Pagan, Joseph M. (1998), Ebla Electronic Corpus: Onomastic Data Base. Undena Publications (1998 disk); HTML edition by G. Buccellati, IIMAS / Cybernetica Mesopotamica (2012) - DULAT: del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition. Brill, Leiden/Boston (Handbook of Oriental Studies 1/112); Third Revised Edition, tr. and ed. Wilfred G.E. Watson; 2 parts - CAD U/W: Oriental Institute (Martha T. Roth, ed.) (2010), The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, vol. 20, U and W. The Oriental Institute, Chicago --- Page: https://linear-a.ai/lexicon/A-MA/ Licence: CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Cite as: di Mino, Tom. 2026. Linear A Lexicon. Plasma AI. https://linear-a.ai/. Data: kaphtor, commit 50525edd.