A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
A Nippur liturgy to Nintur, the birth mother. A birth liturgy to Nintur: “the lyre sounds.” The strongest of its wave's fragments.
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.
Museum number: N 1322 + (Penn Museum, Babylonian Section; the "+" marks a joined fragment whose number is not given in the corpus), Nippur. Corpus ID: CDLI P276471; ORACC OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies). Composition: Unidentified. OBEL's inventory files this tablet under the genre "Nintu" — and the text bears that out: the birth mother Nintur is named three times, the birth mother's nurse stands beside her, Keš (Nintur's city) is named, and the cry al-u₃ runs through column ii like a refrain. A Sumerian liturgy to the birth goddess, Old Babylonian, in the Emesal register. No incipit survives (column i is preserved only in line-ends), so the piece cannot be matched to a named composition from what is served. Source: OBEL's served interlinear text (transliteration with a partial English gloss row), fetched and saved by Wave C (). OBEL serves no translation for this tablet — one of the 23 zero-translation items of Wave C's screen. witness. The composition-level question stays open behind the doors named 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 sign traces survive; whole only if a complete clause survives intact. No line of this tablet counts whole.
Publication check (C2, Oct 22): no edition, translation, or discussion of N 1322 was found in any source reachable from this desk — not in the program's own tree (the number occurs only in Wave C's report), not in open web search under the museum number, the CDLI number, or the Nintur subject. The old Langdon-era Nintud liturgy that search does surface (Ni 14031 and its Istanbul prism, a liturgy on the creation of man and woman) is a different tablet and a different text — checked and set aside, not a match: nothing in its published sections carries this tablet's nurse, its al-u₃ refrains, or its lyre lines. Doors left on the face: (1) Delnero's catalogue of the Emesal compositions (SANER 26) has not been eyeballed for this tablet — the standing door for every OBEL zero, held in the print-check wave. If the catalogue identifies the composition and lists an edition, the claim narrows accordingly. (2) CDLI's record (P276471) is unread — CDLI is still down. (3) Jeremiah Peterson's unpublished Nippur work is the standing unknown for all OBEL N-number material; as with the program's other Nippur pieces, a drawer rendering, if one exists, does not count as publication — but it would be credited here the moment it can be checked.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. No ušum, no muš, no serpent word of any kind is preserved in what is served. The storm lines (ii 16–17) are weather, not dragons, and are not dressed up as anything else.
Column i survives only in line-ends: cries, answers, goings. Column ii is where the people of the piece stand — the nurse, the birth mother, the lyre, the storm.
o? i′ 1: [... ] x [...]
o? i′ 2: [... ] x [...]
o? i′ 3: [... ] x [...]
o? i′ 4: [... ] x x x [...]
o? i′ 5: [... ] -⸢ša?⸣-ša [...] -ša-ša (repeated syllables; the word is lost)
o? i′ 6: [... ] ⸢ru?⸣-da-ni [...] his/its [...] (the word is lost)
o? i′ 7: [... ] -ni-in-šum₂ [...] he gave (it) to him(?) (unglossed in the corpus; the form is the standard verb "to give")
o? i′ 8: [... ] -⸢na?⸣ ba-an-ŋar [...] he placed (it) there
o? i′ 9: [... ] gu₃ am₃-me [...] a voice cries out
o? i′ 10: [... ] ⸢gu₃?⸣ im-me [...] a voice cries out
o? i′ 11: [... ] -⸢ra?⸣-gi₄-gi₄-de₃-eš [...] they will answer(?) (unglossed in the corpus; gi₄, "to answer, to return," in a plural form)
o? i′ 12: [... ] -⸢gi₄⸣-gi₄-de₃-eš [...] they will answer(?)
o? i′ 13: [... ] -⸢gi₄-gi₄-ne⸣ [...] they answer(?)
o? i′ 14: [... ] -⸢ta⸣ ŋa₂-nu [...] let me go(?)
o? i′ 15: [... ] x ŋa₂-nu [...] let me go(?)
o? i′ 16: [... ] x ŋa₂-nu [...] let me go(?)
o? i′ 17: [... ] x-PA-PA-x-e [...] (traces) [...]
o? i′ 18: [... ] x-NE [...] (a trace) [...]
o? i′ 19: [... ] x [...]
o? i′ 20: [... ] x [...]
o? ii′ 1: x x x-⸢ŋu₁₀⸣ al-x [... ] [...] my [...] (the rest is lost)
o? ii′ 2: um-me-ga-la₂ x TE x [... ] the nurse [...]
o? ii′ 3: ama-gan ᵈnin-⸢tu⸣ [... ] / ša₃-ga al-ḫu-⸢nu?⸣ [... ] the birth mother Nintur [...] / in her heart grown weak(?) [...]
o? ii′ 4: ⸢al-u₃⸣ x x [... ] al-u₃ — (refrain cry, untranslated in the corpus) [...]
o? ii′ 5: ŋeš gibil šu bar-⸢ra?⸣ [... ] new wood [...] a hand [...] set outside(?) [...]
o? ii′ 6: al-u₃ ŋeš ⸢gibil⸣ [... ] al-u₃ — the new wood [...]
o? ii′ 7: mes-e im-babbar₂ x [... ] the hero — white gypsum [...]
o? ii′ 8: al-u₃ dim₃-me-⸢er⸣ [... ] al-u₃ — the god [...]
o? ii′ 9: al-u₃ dim₃-me-er [... ] al-u₃ — the god [...]
o? ii′ 10: al-u₃ ᵈlama x [... ] al-u₃ — the protective deity (lama) [...]
o? ii′ 11: za₃-mi₂ dug₄-ga [... ] the lyre sounds [...]
o? ii′ 12: za₃-mi₂ dug₄-ga [... ] the lyre sounds [...]
o? ii′ 13: ⸢keš₃?⸣ki x x [... ] Keš [...] (Nintur's city)
o? ii′ 14: ᵈnin-tu-re x [... ] for Nintur [...]
o? ii′ 15: al-u₃ ᵈ⸢am?⸣-[an-ki? ... ] / ᵈnin-⸢tu⸣ [... ] al-u₃ — Amanki (Enki) [...] / Nintur [...]
o? ii′ 16: u₄ i₃-⸢lu₃?⸣-a-ŋu₁₀ u₄ [... ] the storm [...] my [...] the storm [...]
o? ii′ 17: ud gi₁₆-le-eŋ₃ [... ] the storm forsakes [...]
o? ii′ 18: AN NE x [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
o? ii′ 19: x x x x [... ] [...]
39 served line-units (col. i 20 + col. ii 19): 0 whole · 14 part · 25 fragment · 0 invented. The part-lines are the answering and going refrains of column i (7–16), the birth-mother line (ii 3), the two lyre lines (ii 11–12), and the storm line (ii 17). The rest are names, single words, and traces — rendered as such.
The strongest of this wave's four scraps. A liturgy to the birth goddess in her own city, with her nurse beside her and a lyre sounding in the middle of it — and then, at the end of what survives, a storm that forsakes. Who is crying al-u₃, and at whom, the broken half of every line has taken with it. But the tablet's company is named and on the record now: Nintur, her nurse, Amanki, the protective deity, Keš — and a storm turning away.
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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