A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
An Inana scrap that asks “why?”. The night's second “why?” text.
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: HS 2729 — Hilprecht Sammlung, Jena, from Nippur. Old Babylonian. Corpus ID: CDLI X130502 (OBEL's internal X-number; no P-number assigned in the corpus record); served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies), genre "Uncertain." Composition: Unidentified. Eight obverse line-ends of a lament in which Inana is named once, a house is "mine" twice, and the same cry stands twice in a row: ta-a-aš u₃-a — "why? oh!" No rubric survives. 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 HS 2729 found in the program's tree or in open search under its HS number. The Jena collection's Nippur literary tablets were published selectively (the TMH series and journal pieces); no treatment of this number surfaced. Doors left on the face: (1) Delnero, SANER 26 (catalogue eyeball outstanding, print-check wave). (2) The Jena Hilprecht Sammlung's own catalogues and the TMH NF volumes — not eyeballed from this desk. (3) Peterson's unpublished Nippur work — the standing unknown for all OBEL Nippur material.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. Nothing of the kind is preserved. The tablet's one complete gesture is a question, asked twice.
o 1′: [... ]-ta ba-⸢x⸣ [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
o 2′: [... ] lul-la ⸢gul?⸣-la-⸢ba⸣ mi-[... ] [...] falsely [...] destroying [...]
o 3′: [... ] ᵈinana-bi im-ma-ni-⸢x⸣ [... ] [...] her Inana [...]
o 4′: [... ] ⸢x⸣ e₂-ŋu₁₀ ⸢gi₄⸣-gi₄-a [... ] [...] my house, returning [...]
o 5′: [... ] ⸢x⸣-ŋu₁₀ ta-a-aš u₃-⸢a?⸣ [... ] [...] mine — why? oh! [...]
o 6′: [... ]-la-ŋu₁₀ ta-a-aš u₃-⸢a?⸣ [... ] [...] mine — why? oh! [...]
o 7′: [... ]-⸢ga⸣-ŋu₁₀-⸢da-x⸣ ba-ra-⸢an?⸣ [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
o 8′: [... ]-⸢ŋu₁₀?⸣ [... ] ⸢gig UD?⸣ [... ] [...] sick [...]
8 served line-units: 0 whole · 4 part · 4 fragment · 0 invented. The part-lines are the destroying line (o 2′), the returning-house line (o 4′), and the two "why? oh!" lines (o 5′, o 6′).
Eight line-ends, and the middle of them is a cry repeated word for word: mine — why? oh! Inana is named once, a house is claimed twice, sickness stands in the last line. Wave C2 built an Uruk fragment that asks "why?" four times (AUWE 23, 128); this Nippur scrap asks it twice, in a different word and a different city, and gets the same silence back. The two tablets do not know each other. The question was simply in the air of these laments, and it is still legible on both.
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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