A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
“Let him lie down on the green meadow” — closing prayer of a royal inscription. Von Soden identified it in German in 1989 and knew no parallel for the meadow line. Copy only (OECT 11 no. 55).
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.
end of a royal inscription: well-being and life, the favour of the gods, hearing and peace, peoples in abundance, and a king laid down to rest on green pasture. Wolfgang von Soden, reviewing the copy volume in 1989, identified the piece in German: it belongs, he wrote, "offenbar zum Schlußgebet einer Inschrift wohl eines der Chaldäer-Könige" — evidently to the closing prayer of an inscription of one of the Chaldean kings. An identification and one rendered phrase in German are a door, not a bar; but they are also not nothing, and the claim waits on the eyeballs named on the face.**
Built 2026-10-22 from a fresh live eBL fetch (saved in ). The tablet was reachable only under eBL's import form Ashm-1924.1791 — see OVERNIGHT-A7-REPORT.md for the form-map.
One fragment: Ashm-1924.1791, Neo-Babylonian script, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. CDLI number on the live record: P348941. No photograph on the record. Ten lines serve, all broken at the left edge; nothing on the record names the king.
A blessing in the inscription's own closing voice: "well-being, life […]; favour […]; hearing and peace […]; peoples in abundance […]; let him lie down on the green meadow." The meadow line is the piece's signature — a king's rest pictured as a flock laid down on grass — and it is the one line a scholar has already carried into print, in German, with its strangeness noted.
Transliteration exactly as the record serves it. Counts: 10 line-units — 0 whole, 6 part, 4 fragments, 0 invented.
1'. [...] x x-ṣu x [...] (traces only)
2'. [...] x-al-la x [...] (traces only)
3'. [...] x nam-ri[š? ...] (traces only; "brightly" may stand in the breakage but is not rendered)
4'. [... š]u-lum ba-la-ṭ[i ...] "[… we]ll-being, life […]" (part)
5'. [... E]N?.LIL₂{ki} i-ger-re-e dum-q[i₂ ...] "[…] in Nippur(?) […] favour […]" (part; the place reading is the record's own uncertain marking)
6'. [... BA]L?-e la-ba-a-ri [...] "[…] of lasting long […]" (part; uncertain)
7'. [... taš-me-e] u₃ sa-li-mi [...] "[… hearing] and peace […]" (part)
8'. [... UN-MEŠ] de-ša₂-a-ti [...] "[… peoples] in abundance […]" (part)
9'. [... a-bur-r]iš šur-bi-iṣ [...] "[…] let him lie down on the green meadow" (part — von Soden's rendering, from the German quoted in the credits; he knew no parallel for the line)
10'. [...] x [...] (traces only; the fragment ends)
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
More antiquities research: Antiquities Research