A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
The “my going” fragment. A first-person fragment of going.
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, 143 — hand copy no. 143 in Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler 10 (Berlin, 1916-era copy volume: copy only, no transliteration, no translation). Corpus ID: CDLI P342951; served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies) from Sippar. Old Babylonian. Composition: Unidentified. A liturgy or dialogue fragment built on a refrain — "my going" (ŋen-na-ŋu₁₀) opens three lines — and on one repeated question, "your mother — what? where?" Composition unidentified; no deity is named in what survives. Source: OBEL's served interlinear text, fetched and saved by Wave C (). OBEL serves no translation, and for this tablet almost no gloss row — most renderings below are from the forms alone and are marked so. 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 VS 10, 143 found in the program's tree or in open search under its VS number or CDLI P342951. The refrain phrase and the "your mother — what? where?" line were searched as strings; no published composition carries them in any form this desk could reach. Doors left on the face: (1) Delnero, SANER 26 (catalogue eyeball outstanding, print-check wave). (2) Cohen, CLAM (1988) composition identification. (3) CDLI's record (P342951) — unread; CDLI is still down.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. Nothing of the kind is preserved.
o 1′: [... ]-x ŋen-na-ŋu₁₀ [...] my going (from the forms alone)
o 2′: [... ]-⸢zi?⸣-ta-ka [...] (traces) [...]
o 3′: [... ] ŋen-na-ŋu₁₀ [...] my going (from the forms alone)
o 4′: [... ] i-NIG₂-ḪUR-ra [...] (unglossed in the corpus) [...]
o 5′: [... ] ama-zu ta ki [...] your mother — what? where? (from the forms alone)
o 6′: [... ] AMA-ka mi-na i-be₂-[... ] [...] of the mother [...] two(?) [...] speaks [...]
o 7′: [... ]-ni-zu ta ki [...] yours — what? where? (from the forms alone)
o 8′: [... ] ⸢mi⸣-na ga-gu-ka [...] (unglossed in the corpus) [...]
r 2′: [... ]-x ŋen-⸢na⸣-[... ] [...] my going [...] (the refrain again, from the forms alone)
r 3′: [... ] ba-⸢li?⸣-x [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
r 4′: [... ]-x ŋen-⸢na⸣-[... ] [...] my going [...] (from the forms alone)
r 6′: [... ] ⸢gi⸣ x-[... ] [...] (traces) [...]
12 served line-units: 0 whole · 7 part · 5 fragment · 0 invented. The part-lines are the three refrain lines (o 1′, o 3′, and the two reverse traces of it counted with them at r 2′ and r 4′), the two "what? where?" lines (o 5′, o 7′), and the mother line (o 6′).
A voice going somewhere, asked about a mother. The refrain — my going — and the question — your mother: what? where? — are the whole of what the fragment keeps, and they are enough to hear the shape of the piece: a departure, and somebody left asking after a mother. In the Inana-Dumuzi world OBEL files around it, departures and mothers are the lament's home ground, but the tablet names neither god nor mother, and the reading does not name them for it.
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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