A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
“I am the mugib priestess”. A first-person Emesal liturgy: “I am the mugib priestess” stands three times on the reverse.
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: VS 10, 167 — hand copy no. 167 in Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler 10 (Berlin, 1916-era copy volume: copy only, no transliteration, no translation — the series' manner, as the program's 1.6.4 dossier records for its no. 197). Corpus ID: CDLI P342975; served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies) from Sippar. Old Babylonian. Composition: Unidentified. An Emesal liturgy in the first-person voice of a mugib priestess — "I am the mugib priestess" stands three times on the reverse — addressed through a mother, a husband, and the goddess Gašan-niŋar ("the Lady of Niŋar"), with An and Enlil named in its closing lines and tears (er₂) running through them. OBEL files the tablet under the genre "Aruru-Dingirmah," the birth-goddess circle; no incipit or rubric survives on the fragment. 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. the witness, with the doors standing 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 sign traces survive; whole only if a complete clause survives intact. No line of this tablet counts whole.
Publication check (C3, Oct 22): the tablet's only publication of record is its VS 10 hand copy. No edition, translation, or discussion of VS 10, 167 was found in the program's tree or in open search under its VS number or its CDLI number P342975. The composition could not be identified with any translated composition from what survives: searches on its signature material (the mugib priestess's first-person refrain, Gašan-niŋar) surface a different, already-published Inana song complex (the "I want to soothe the lord" cycle, edited in the Manchester Tammuz literature) whose lines — Gašanana, the Abzu, the 36,000 units of flax — appear nowhere on this tablet. That near-match is recorded here so it is not re-run: this is not that text. Doors left on the face: (1) Delnero, How To Do Things With Tears (SANER 26) — its catalogue covers OB Emesal manuscripts from Sippar as well as Nippur and Kish, and its index runs to exactly this tablet's vocabulary (ga-ša-an, mu-gi, men₃); whether catalogue eyeball outstanding, print-check wave. (2) Cohen, CLAM (1988) — the standard edition of the balaĝ corpus; a composition identification there would re-scope this claim. (3) CDLI's record (P342975) — unread; CDLI is still down.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. No ušum, no muš-serpent, no mušḫuššu, no bašmu is preserved. The tablet's powers are a priestess, a mother, and tears.
o 1′: [... ] ⸢bala?⸣ [... ] [...] the office/turn(?) [...]
o 2′: [... ]-ŋu₁₀ ⸢nam-šul⸣ [gi₄]-⸢gi₄?⸣ [... ] [...] my [...] manhood [...] returns(?) [...]
o 3′: ⸢ul⸣ peš-⸢peš⸣ ama-bi i₃-⸢gi₄?⸣-[... ] [...] swelling, thick [...] her mother [...] returns(?) [...]
o 4′: ama-ŋu₁₀ e₂ ma-an-⸢tu? te⸣-a-am₃ [... ] my mother [...] the house [...] she built(?) [...]
o 5′: ga-ša-an-niŋar ŋar-ra ⸢e₂? ma?⸣-[... ] Gašan-niŋar, established [...] the house(?) [...]
o 6′: ⸢mu⸣-gib₃ men₃ e₂-⸢bi? x x⸣ [... ] I am the mugib priestess [...] its house [...]
o 7′: ⸢ama?-gan?-na? men₃ dam⸣-bi dam ⸢x⸣ [... ] I am the mother(?) [...] her husband, the husband [...]
o 8′: [... ] ⸢x x x⸣ [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
r 1′: [... ] ⸢x x x⸣ [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
r 2′: [mu-gi₁₇]-ib ni₂-zu ⸢šul?⸣ [(x) (x)]-⸢gin₇⸣ [... ] the mugib priestess [...] yourself [...] like a youth(?) [...]
r 3′: ⸢šul-x-gin₇⸣ šul ⸢kal⸣-la-gin₇ a-gin₇ ba-ab-[... ] like a [...] youth, like a precious youth — thus [...]
r 4′: ama mu-gi₁₇-ib ni₂-zu mu-tin-gin₇ 30 giŋ₄ ⸢x⸣ [... ] mother mugib priestess [...] yourself [...] like life(?) [...] 30 shekels [...] (mu-tin rendered from the form alone; the corpus glosses only the weight, 30 giŋ₄)
r 5′: mu-gib₃ men₃ ki an ku₃-ge-da er₂ ⸢x⸣ [... ] I am the mugib priestess [...] the place [...] with holy An [...] tears [...]
r 6′: an ku₃-ge ᵈmu-ul-lil₂ (erasure) ku₃-ge [... ] with holy An, holy Enlil [...]
r 7′: ma niŋar ŋar-ra si?-si-ig-⸢ga-bi⸣-[zu ... ] I [...] the Niŋar cella, established, its flattening(?) [...]
r 8′: mu-gib₃ men₃ er₂-e mu-⸢nu₂⸣-[... ] I am the mugib priestess [...] in tears [...] she lies down [...]
r 9′: ga-ša-an-niŋar! ŋar-ra-ke₄ ⸢A⸣-[... ] of Gašan-niŋar, the established one [...]
r 10′: ⸢er₂⸣-e u₂ A-⸢MUNUS?⸣ [... ] in tears [...] grass [...] a woman(?) [...]
r 11′: [x]-⸢ga egi₂⸣ u₈-⸢a? x⸣ [... ] [...] the princess [...] oh! [...]
19 served line-units: 0 whole · 14 part · 5 fragment · 0 invented. The part-lines are the mugib self-declarations (o 6′, r 5′, r 8′), the mother and goddess lines (o 3′–5′, o 7′), the youth similes (r 2′–4′), and the An-and-Enlil closing (r 5′–7′, r 9′).
The voice is the find. Three times on the reverse the speaker names herself — "I am the mugib priestess" — and around that declaration the fragment keeps a mother, a husband, a goddess's cella, a sum of thirty shekels, and tears in line after line, until the last preserved names are the two oldest gods, holy An and holy Enlil. Who she is lamenting, and what the thirty shekels were for, stood in the lines that are gone. What survives is a priestess introducing herself to her gods in the first person — and, until tonight, nobody had put her words into English.
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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