A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
Authority and release. A fragment of authority and release.
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: NFT p. 211 — page 211 of Cros (with Thureau-Dangin), Nouvelles fouilles de Tello (Paris, 1910), the Tello (Ĝirsu) excavation publication; the tablet is Louvre AO 4345. Old Babylonian. Corpus ID: CDLI P355656; served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies), genre "Uncertain." A multi-column tablet; the extraction's slashes mark column breaks, and column iii serves nothing at all. Composition: Unidentified. Two columns of traces and one line that still speaks in abstracts: nam-še-er-ŋa₂-al, "authority," and nam-du₈, "release" — the vocabulary of decrees and loosenings, in a tablet whose narrative, if it had one, is gone. 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): as for NFT p. 206 — the volume's treatment of this piece could not be eyeballed from this desk, and no later edition or translation was found in the program's tree or in open search under NFT p. 211, AO 4345, or CDLI P355656. A French-only treatment in the 1910 volume, if one exists, is a door on the face, not a bar; the claim is an English claim only. Doors left on the face: (1) The NFT volume itself, p. 211 (print-check wave). (2) Thureau-Dangin's Tello-era articles. (3) CDLI's record (P355656) — unread; CDLI is still down.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. Nothing of the kind is preserved.
o i′ 1′: [... ] ⸢x⸣ [...] (a trace) [...]
o i′ 2′: [... ] / [... ] / [... ] ⸢da⸣ / [... ]-⸢u₂⸣ [...] (traces across the columns) [...]
o i′ 3′: [... ] ⸢x⸣ / [... ] ⸢na⸣ / [... ] ⸢x⸣ ŋa₂ / [... ] ⸢x⸣ ŋa₂ [...] (traces) [...]
o ii′ 1′: [... ] ⸢x ri-me-eš⸣ / ⸢x⸣ bi-re-eš [...] (traces) [...]
o ii′ 2′: nam-še-er-ŋa₂-⸢al⸣ / ⸢da⸣ [x] / nam-du₈?-⸢ŋa₂⸣ [x x x] / [... ] authority [...] / release(?) [...]
o ii′ 3′: li ⸢x⸣ [... ] / lu₂* [... ] [...] the person [...]
6 served line-units: 0 whole · 1 part · 5 fragment · 0 invented. The part-line is o ii′ 2′ — the corpus glosses both its abstracts (namšermal, "authority"; namduh, "release").
The thinnest build of the eighteen, and the record says so rather than dressing it. What AO 4345 still holds is two big words — authority, release — the load-bearing vocabulary of every hymn that asks a god to loosen what binds. Tonight's other Uruk scrap begs with exactly that grammar: its bond is cut off. The words travelled; this tablet kept only the words.
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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