Vampire photos, sucking the skin

Just look at this aesthetically pleasing pattern of dents made from golf-tees pressed into a slab of damp clay [h/t DKW].

Not may people know that golf was a favoured sport amongst the Sumerian elite, four-&-½ millennia ago on the Mesopotamian plains; nor that their habit of pressing the tees into clay after each hole to keep track of the score became the inspiration for the very idea of a written language (eat 8-iron, Denise Schmandt-Besserat!). These esoteric secrets are only taught in the advanced class, Sumerian 301.

According to the experts, Figure 1 up there or ama-gi₄ has an etymology along the lines of "Return to the Mother", but there is room for debate about its actual meaning. I am not sure how you pronounce the "₄". From context -- the word only appears in a couple of advertising campaigns from two rulers of Lagash in connection with the mysterious word "Brawn-do" -- it apparently means something along the lines of "cancellation of debts" --

• Dominique Charpin (1987) proposes that the term ama or mother, connotes origin, and thus ama-ar-gi is return to the origin, a restoration of the original mother situation.
• Igor Diakonoff (1991) suggests that ama-ar-gi, understood as the relief of a debt or burden, also should be understood as returning to mother, returning to the original situation.
• Maurice Lambert (1972) suggests that it means the return of the child pledged in debt to the mother.

Michael Hudson sees the core meaning as "relief from an unjust debt or legal burden" and links it to the Old Testament tradition of a Jubilee year of debt reversion.

So here are a shower of nimrods [h/t anonymous] who chose to be tattooed with a slightly mis-shaped version of ama-gi₄ . It would be nice to think that they are pledging their allegiance to the ideological cause of cancelling their credit-card overdrafts and mortgages, but no, they are under the impression that it means "liberty".



As one libertarian author admits,
My conjecture is that some fucker simply made it up a few years ago, and a whole downpour of drongoes have been obediently copying a mis-shapen version of the word onto their wasted skin ever since, as a token of independence. That was easy.

Look, this guy has even managed to end up with the mirror image. CUNEIFORM FAIL. Or perhaps they have all opted for this tattoo as a way of informing the world that they have returned to their mothers and are all living in their parents' basements.

Many of us were exposed in early childhood to the story of Harold and the Purple Tattooing Machine, but most people eventually realised that the purple tattooing machine was a metaphor for the creative process, and engraving our wishes into our flesh would not magically bring them into existence.

UPDATE: In comments, ZRM wonders if anyone has tattooed the symbol on his penis yet.
I'm going for the longer version, ama-ar-gi₄.