A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
An incantation against the thing on the bed. Out of Geller's drawer — his copy, his transliteration, Englished here as a reading while the checks named below stay open. It opens with the Eridu formula, names the attacker as the son of Ereškigal, and ends with its rubric. The serpent-list word muš₅ sits inside the rubric's unresolved name — flagged on the build, nothing claimed from it.
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.
Status: BUILT — witness reading, fragments class · claim: none — English rendering of this tablet's preserved lines on present evidence, doors named below · built 2026-10-22 by the overnight B3 Ni number-space sweep (record in neither program census; found by direct probing of the Ni number space on eBL).
The piece: Ni 2924 · Istanbul Museum (Nippur) · Old Babylonian · no CDLI number on the record · from the copy and transliteration of Markham J. Geller, entered on eBL by Enrique Jiménez · 0 #tr.en · 21 line-units · genre: incantation — its own rubric survives (rev. 8′).
An incantation against a night-thing. It opens with the old Eridu formula — en₂ e₂-nu-ru, "Incantation: House of Light" — and names the attacker in its third line: the son of Ereškigal, the death-queen's boy, Namtar's kin. The thing flies, it smears its venom and its spittle, it lays its hand on the young woman, drives its arm against the young man, and overwhelms the man who stands in its way. Against it the rite sets the household of Eridu: the word of Enki on the offering-table, Damgalnuna asked to set the matter straight, and Asaralimnuna — Asalluhi under his firstborn name, Enki's eldest son — whose kindly heart closes the case with the assignment formula of the exorcist's art: za-a-kam, "it is yours." The rubric at the end tells the practitioner what the tablet is for: an incantation "for the zi₃-še-muš₅ on the bed."
Serpent flag, stated as a flag: the rubric's še-muš₅ carries muš₅, a word of the serpent lists, inside a name this desk cannot resolve — it may name a creature, a plant, or a preparation. Flagged by name, per standing orders; nothing is claimed from it.
Drawer discipline, on the face: this reading is built from Geller's unpublished copy and transliteration as served by the eBL record — the program publishes its own verified reading of those lines, not the scholar's notebook. No #tr.en stands on the record; no edition of this tablet was found. Its distinctive strings — zi₃-še-muš₅, asar-alim-nun-na, dumu {d}ereš-ki-gal, the rubric string ka-inim-ma zi₃ — occur zero times in the 86.9 MB local CDLI ATF export, and the incipit formula itself returned zero as encoded (checked string by string, 2026-10-22; reported as run). Whether these twelve obverse lines join a known incantation series (Udug-hul and its kin treat the same personnel) is a question for the corpus doors named below, and the reading does not pre-answer it. Visual layer: not consulted.
Obverse
Reverse
Notes on the words: e₂-nu-ru, "House of Light," is the ancient incipit that heads the Eridu incantation family — the words themselves are the door through which Enki's help enters. The attacker's pedigree does the diagnosing: a son of Ereškigal works by venom and spittle (uš₁₁, uš₇), by touch and by the driven arm — sickness as assault. The defense is procedural, not martial: an herb set in place, a spell set in the vat, the deed spoken aloud twice — and then the case is transferred upward, to Damgalnuna's straightening and Asaralimnuna's ownership. za-a-kam, "it is yours," is the exorcist handing the patient to the god.
Rendered 20 of 21 line-units — 2 whole / 12 part / 6 fragment / 0 invented. Unrendered: obv. 12, a two-sign stump.
Gates run: zero #tr.en on the record; no EDITION or DISCUSSION reference typed on the record; the tablet's distinctive strings unattested in the local corpus on six independent checks. Doors: Geller's own publications of his Istanbul copies, if this tablet stands among them (the eyeball belongs to the print-check wave); the incantation-series catalogues (Udug-hul / Muššuʾu orbits) when ORACC access returns; collation against Geller's copy as served.
Built from the eBL fragment record Ni.2924 (fetched 2026-10-22). Copy and transliteration © Markham J. Geller, entered on eBL by Enrique Jiménez / the eBL project. English rendering of this witness's preserved lines: Vigslist translations — AI-assisted, cross-checked against the transliteration as served.
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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