A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
The “what in the night?” fragment. “What […] in the night?”
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. 206 — page 206 of Cros (with Thureau-Dangin), Nouvelles fouilles de Tello (Paris, 1910), the publication of the Tello (ancient Ĝirsu) excavations. Old Babylonian tablet from Ĝirsu, Louvre (AO series). Corpus ID: CDLI P355650; served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies), genre "Uncertain." The extraction is multi-column: the slashes in OBEL's text mark column breaks, and the piece reads as a two-column tablet whose columns repeat a refrain. Composition: Unidentified. A night text: three times the refrain ta i-ŋe₆-e — "what [...] in the night?" — and around it a bad wind (me-re ḫu-ul) that does not eat. Lament or incantation, the fragment does not declare itself. 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): the NFT volume published the Tello tablets with copies and, for some texts, Thureau-Dangin's early transliterations and renderings; its treatment of the p. 206 piece could not be eyeballed from this desk, and no later edition or translation of the piece was found in the program's tree or in open search under its NFT page or CDLI P355650. If Thureau-Dangin rendered it in French in 1910, the standing program position applies: a French-only treatment is a door on the face, not a bar, and the claim here is an English claim only. Doors left on the face: (1) The NFT volume itself, p. 206 (print-check wave). (2) Thureau-Dangin's Tello-era articles (RA and elsewhere) — the standing risk shelf for any Ĝirsu literary piece of this vintage. (3) CDLI's record (P355650) — unread; CDLI is still down.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. The bad wind is weather or demon-weather; no serpent word stands anywhere on the fragment.
o i′ 1′: [... ] ⸢x ri⸣ / [... ] ⸢x ba?-x⸣ ; ri [...] (traces across the columns) [...]
o i′ 2′: [... ] ⸢x x⸣ / [... ] ⸢x⸣ [...] (traces) [...]
r i′ 1′: [... / ... ] / ⸢ta i-ŋe₆-e⸣ [... ] [...] what [...] in the night? [...]
r i′ 2′: me-re ḫu-⸢ul⸣ [... ] / nu-gu-gu [... ] / ta i*-ŋe₆-e ⸢x⸣ [... ] the bad wind [...] / does not eat [...] / what [...] in the night? [...]
r i′ 3′: ur₂-ri-gin₇ ⸢x⸣ [... ] / nu-⸢de?⸣-e-⸢la⸣ [... ] / ⸢ta i-ŋe₆-e⸣ [... ] like the root(?) [...] / does not [...] / what [...] in the night? [...]
r ii′ 1′: [... ] ⸢ra?⸣ / [... ] ⸢x x⸣ nu-⸢du⸣ [...] (traces) [...]
r ii′ 2′: [... ] ⸢x da⸣ / [... ] ⸢bi⸣-na-ŋu₉ / [... ] ⸢zi⸣ bi-im-ša₃ [...] his [...] / [...] life(?) [...] his heart [...] (ša₃ "heart" from the form alone)
r ii′ 3′: [... ] ⸢x ra⸣-ŋu₉ ⸢ne⸣ / [... ] ⸢nu-du⸣ [...] (traces) [...]
r ii′ 4′: [... ] ⸢x e x⸣ / [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
9 served line-units: 0 whole · 3 part · 6 fragment · 0 invented. The part-lines are the three refrain lines of reverse column i — the question asked three times, once with the bad wind standing in it.
A question asked in the dark, three times: what — in the night? A bad wind goes through the lines and does not eat, and whatever the question was about stood in the column beginnings that are gone. The Ĝirsu tablets are the oldest stratum of tonight's eighteen — published in 1910, before most of Sumerian grammar existed — and this one has waited in that volume while the field grew up around 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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