First English translation. A Vigslist translation.
The Opening of the Hand-Raising Prayer to Madānu. This fragment alone among the Berlin witnesses keeps the prayer's head — composition lines 1–5, the opening the big group lost. Companion to the Assur score above, not a rival. Five of the six lines the German edition counts are rendered here; the sixth stands broken in the record and is not rendered.
First-English working label (this witness). The edition of record is Maul & Strauß, KAL 4 no. 58 (2011), pp. 112–113; a French translation stands in Seux (1976) (German and French). No English translation was found in the checks named below.
The claim is scoped to this witness. Five of the six lines the German edition counts are rendered here; the sixth stands broken in the record and is not rendered.
Status: published reading. Printed in Vigslist Translations (Piece 12, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23587830). Built 2026-10-22.
Tablet: VAT 14074 (Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin) — light-brown fragment from the top edge of a single-column Neo-Assyrian tablet, 35 × 49 × 22 mm; remains of 6 lines on the obverse (KAL 4's count; eBL serves 5 transliterated lines, see gate 3); the reverse missing/uninscribed as preserved. No older copy (KAL 4 Katalog: "Ältere Kopie: –"); KAL 4 prints a copy of the obverse at its p. 221. CDLI P480750 (eBL's externalNumbers). No excavation number, no findspot on the record.
Composition: the Akkadian šu-il₂-la₂ ("hand-raising") prayer to Madānu, the judge god — "Madānu 1" in W. Mayer, Untersuchungen zur Formensprache der babylonischen "Gebetsbeschwörungen" (Studia Pohl SM 5, 1976), pp. 459–465, where this fragment is witness K. This is the fragment that keeps the prayer's head: its obverse preserves composition lines 1–5 — the opening that the large Berlin group built by Wave D11 (VAT 13684+, KAL 4 Text Nr. 59) lost with its tablet's top edge. The two builds are companions, not rivals: D11 rendered the group score from composition line 4 onward; this fragment alone among the Berlin witnesses still carries lines 1–3.
1. EDITION (German): Maul & Strauß, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts 4 (KAL 4, 2011), Text Nr. 58, pp. 112–113 — transliteration and German translation. Eyeballed tonight, 2026-10-22, in the open digitization at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (digi.hadw-bw.de/view/kal4, scans 0125–0126 = pp. 112–113; OCR in this folder, ). The German translation on p. 112 is the control for every restoration printed below. Edition of the composition: W. Mayer, UFBG (1976), pp. 459–465 (German). Ebeling, AGH (1953), p. 53 and pp. 32–35 stand behind both (the record's uncurated references add OrNS 59 (1990), pp. 283, 297).
3. #tr.en census and served score: the eBL record (fetched live tonight by this wave's own curl, ) serves 5 transliterated lines (obv. 1–5), then "$ rest of obverse broken"; the reverse is served as "$ reverse missing". #tr.en 0 (counted on the file). KAL 4's Katalog counts remains of 6 lines on the obverse; the sixth line's remains stand inside eBL's broken remainder and are not rendered. The record's note: "Akk. shuila to Madanu 1 (o1-5); collated with personal photographs [ACL]".
4. #note: sigla: the served ATF carries no #note: lines. The restorations in brackets rest on the duplicates named by KAL 4 Nr. 58 (K 8116 = BMS 48; VAT 13631 = LKA 43; VAT 13634 = LKA 44; VAT 13638 = LKA 45; VAT 13684+ = Text Nr. 59) and are controlled against KAL 4's German translation — the same basis D11 printed for the group score.
5. Counts: 5 line-units — 0 WHOLE / 5 PART / 0 FRAGMENT / 0 INVENTED.
6. Dragon/serpent scan: NONE. No ušumgal, muš, mušḫuššu, bašmu or ṣerru wording on the fragment. (The muš- hits are the participles mušteširu "who keeps straight" and mušatbû — the D11 false-positive family, printed here so nobody re-flags them.)
Correction note (program rule: corrections on the face): an early draft of this build rested on a record print delivered into this wave's context that did not match the record on disk — it carried two reverse trace lines, a sixth obverse line, an LKA 48 copy reference and a different CDLI number, none of which stand in the live-fetched record. The build was rewritten against before this wave closed; nothing in the earlier draft survives except the identification itself, which both prints share and KAL 4 confirms.
1. [Lord, who keeps on the right path] all humankind, all [creation], 2. [who renders] a just judgement, god over the [world's regions], 3. [Madānu, who wat]ches humankind, who makes the we[ak] rise, 4. [who spares the fall]en and the wretched, who rescues [the murdered man], 5. […… who] keeps [the orphan girl] straight!
(Lines 1–3 are the lines lost from the top edge of the VAT 13684+ tablet; lines 4–5 duplicate the group score's first preserved lines, D11 obv. 1′ and 3′. The rest of the obverse is broken away; the reverse is missing.)
End of build. Companion to Wave D11's (same composition, the group score). Sources: eBL record VAT.14074 (live fetch by this wave, this folder ); Maul & Strauß, KAL 4 (2011), Text Nr. 58, pp. 112–113 + Katalog p. 21, eyeballed in the Heidelberg open digitization (scans in this folder, ).
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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