A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
A hymn scrap that opens “lord Dumuzi”. It opens: “lord Dumuzi, the son.”
Published as a reading. No first-translation claim is made for this piece. The checks that would settle such a claim are named in the notes below and are still open; the wording on this page claims nothing they have not settled.
Publication number: PRAK B 415 — copy no. B 415 in de Genouillac, Premières recherches archéologiques à Kich (PRAK, 1924–25: hand copies, no translations in the volumes). From Kish. Old Babylonian. Corpus ID: CDLI P344231; served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies), genre "Ninisina-Gula" — the healing goddess's file, in whose circle Dumuzi stands as the dying son (the tradition's Damu). The tablet's own first preserved line writes the name in full: en dumu-zi, "lord Dumuzi." Composition: Unidentified. A second-person hymn fragment: heaven and earth, a rising ("your rising," zi-ga-zu), greatness — all addressed to the lord named in its first line. Whether the hymn is Dumuzi's own or the goddess's hymn with her son inside it, the fragment does not say. Source: OBEL's served interlinear text, fetched and saved by Wave C (). OBEL serves no translation. the witness, doors on the face below. Counting rule used here: a line counts part if a complete verb form or a glossed phrase survives; fragment if only isolated words or traces survive; whole only if a complete clause survives intact. No line counts whole.
Publication check (C3, Oct 22): no edition, translation, or discussion of PRAK B 415 found in the program's tree or in open search under its PRAK number or CDLI P344231. The named risk shelf was checked in kind: the published hymn collections to Ninisina and Damu (the Nippur hymn articles, Sjöberg's Ninisina editions behind ETCSL 4.22.x) are editions of other tablets; nothing in them claims this Kish copy. Doors left on the face: (1) The PRAK volume itself (copy of record). (2) Delnero, SANER 26 (Kish coverage; print-check wave). (3) CDLI's record (P344231) — unread; CDLI is still down. (4) The Damu/Dumuzi name question: the corpus glosses the name as Dumuzid; if the composition proves to be a Damu hymn (Ninisina's son under his other name), the hymn is the goddess's-circle piece either way, and the claim is unaffected — but the identification is recorded here as open.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. Nothing of the kind is preserved — no ušumgal here, though Dumuzi carries that name elsewhere in the program's texts (Ni 09828; MAH 16066). The flag is the absence, recorded so a later reader does not go looking for a dragon this fragment does not hold.
o 1′: [... ] ⸢en⸣ dumu-zi ⸢dumu⸣ [... ] [...] lord Dumuzi, the son [...]
o 2′: [... ] saŋ RU KU-KU-[... ] [...] (unglossed in the corpus) [...]
o 3′: [... ] TUN₃-a-na-⸢zu⸣ 1 [...] yours [...] (from the forms alone)
o 4′: [... ] zi-ga-⸢zu⸣ [...] your rising [...]
o 5′: [... ] an ki-bi i i-⸢BU-BU-zu⸣ [...] heaven and its earth [...] yours [...]
o 6′: [... ] NE DU-⸢zu⸣ [...] yours [...] (traces)
o 7′: [... ]-re-e il? x-[... ] [...] (traces) [...]
o 8′: [... ]-al u₄-re mu-la-zu [...] yours [...] (unglossed in the corpus)
o 9′: [... ]-x-da DI zi-ta x-⸢zu⸣ [...] yours [...] (traces)
o 10′: [... ]-⸢la?⸣ ma-aḫ MU-ke₄ x-zu [...] the great [...] yours [...]
o 11′: [... ]-x saŋ-bi-da gi-x-ra-[x] [...] (traces) [...]
r 1′: [... ]-ke₄ mu-x-x [...] (traces) [...]
r 2′: [... ]-ku-ra nu-mu-še-en lu-[... ] [...] (unglossed in the corpus) [...]
r 3′: [... ]-x-x diŋir-ra in-ta-lu-[... ] [...] the god [...]
r 4′: [... ] DU₈ x ⸢GI₄?⸣ [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
r 5′: [... ]-a-ŋu₁₀ x [... ] [...] mine [...] (traces)
16 served line-units: 0 whole · 3 part · 13 fragment · 0 invented. The part-lines are the naming line (o 1′), the rising line (o 4′), and the heaven-and-earth line (o 5′).
Most of tonight's scraps never name their god. This one does, in its first breath: lord Dumuzi, the son — and then speaks to him in the second person for fifteen more broken lines, your rising, your greatness, heaven and earth in his train. The corpus files the tablet under the healing goddess, and in her house the dying son is the one who is always being addressed and never answered. The fragment holds the address. The answer, if the hymn had one, is in the lost lines.
Nuvira Technologies conducts this research with AI assistance, cross-verified against the primary sources to scholarly integrity standards. Uncertain readings are marked; broken lines are left broken.
— Richard Vigslist, Founder, Nuvira Technologies
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