Look at this Sumerian pictograph 𒄭. You don't need to look at it too closely. It is pronounced (do) or (dog) depending on what comes after it in the context of the sentence and refers in Sumerian to the knee of a human or an animal.

Look at your knee and without having to take it out, you will discover that it resembles the Sumerian pictograph 𒄭.

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In fact, this is a typographic symbol, but if you look at it in the clay tablet you will find that it is more similar to your knee. The meaning of this pictograph is not limited to the word knee but also means "lap". This suggests that this symbol indicates curvature or concavity, whether it is protruding or sunken. You may notice a similarity between it and the pictograph 𒆸, which is pronounced (lagab) in Sumerian and you may differentiate between the two with (plane) geometric terms such as square and parallelogram.

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In fact, the meaning in Sumerian is closer to spatial geometry, as the symbol 𒆸 (Lagab) means an extension or a space protruding from the surface of the earth or any other surface, and therefore it is also used to refer to the base of a tree trunk.

 

As for the symbol 𒄮, which is another similar pictorial drawing with a different pronunciation (Sur), it refers to the extension or the space sunk into the earth or under its horizontal surface. The straight symbol 𒀸inside it is meant perhaps to indicate the horizon while the rest refers to any cavity sunk under the horizontal surface of the earth such as a trench, a canal, or a pond.

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Coming back to the pictograph 𒄭(Doug), which seems to be the basic origin of many symbols that differ from each other by adding another symbol to this symbol or inside it, I want to note that the reverse reading of this symbol is (Guod), and this is exactly the contemporary colloquial word that farmers living on the banks of the Euphrates River in Syria and Iraq use for the canal. They pronounce it "goad".

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It is also noteworthy that the equivalents of the word knee in Phoenician, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Syriac and Ge'ez are based on the sequence of b, r and k (brk). They are/were pronounced:

(ܒ݁ܽܘܪܟ݁ܳܐ) "barku" in Syriac,

bārkū in Akkadian and Ugaritic (𐎁𐎗𐎋), and

(בָּרַךְ) bārk in Biblical Hebrew.

 

There are no ancient inscriptions of Arabic contemporary with these ancient Semitic languages ​​that can be compared with them. However, contemporary Arabic clearly deviates from this arrangement, even though it shares the trilateral root with them, as it contains a switch between letters compared to the ancient Semitic languages. While all ancient Semitic languages ​​that indicate the knee begin with the consonant b, the Arabic word rkbah, unlike them all ends with the consonant b. While the word ends in K in all ancient Semitic languages, K is in the middle of the three basic consonants in contemporary Arabic.

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Another difference is that the word berka in modern standard Arabic, which means a hollow cavity under the horizontal surface of the earth filled with water, converges in meaning (but not in pronunciation) with the Sumerian word 𒄮(pronounced sur), unlike all ancient Semitic languages, which converge in concept with the Sumerian word 𒆸 (lagab), which denotes a protruding curve above the horizontal surface. Perhaps the point of convergence and difference is that the two words baraka and knee converge with the concept of a curve or concavity in general, whether it is hollow or protruding, as is the case with the Sumerian word 𒄭(du) or (dog).

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Let us choose another symbol based on the basic Sumerian symbol for the knee or the lap, which is 𒄵, composed of the symbol for the hollow cavity 𒄭

du in addition to the symbol for barley 𒊺, which is pronounced in Sumerian (shi).

The meaning of this symbol is a millstone for grinding grains, and its pronunciation in Sumerian is somewhat close to its pronunciation in Modern Standard Arabic (الرحى). The Pennsylvania Dictionary of the Sumerian Language writes it in Latin letters as follows: ara.

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