A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
The “Why?” fragment. A lament that asks a-na-aš — “why?” — four times.
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: AUWE 23, 128 — copy no. 128 in Egbert von Weiher, Spätbabylonische Texte aus Uruk V (SpTU V = AUWE 23, 1998), from Uruk. Corpus ID: CDLI P349131; served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies) from the Uruk material. First-millennium Uruk tablet (the SpTU series is late Babylonian; the corpus files it with the Emesal liturgies). Composition: Unidentified. A lament fragment built on a single repeated question — a-na-aš, "why?" — asked four times in the ten lines that survive. No deity's name, no incipit, and no rubric are preserved. 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. witness, with the SpTU V door 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 (C2, Oct 22): the tablet's copy was published by von Weiher in SpTU V (AUWE 23, 1998) — that is what its number means; the volume is not openly digitized and its treatment of no. 128 could not be eyeballed from this desk. SpTU volumes carry, alongside the copies, transliteration and (for most texts) a German translation and commentary. If no. 128 is one of those, the standing position is the program's usual one: a German-only edition is a door on the face, not a bar — the same posture as the Maul and Löhnert doors on earlier builds — and the claim above is an English claim only. No English translation of this text was found anywhere reachable. No other discussion of the piece (under its AUWE number, its SpTU V number, or its CDLI number P349131) was found. Doors left on the face: (1) von Weiher, SpTU V (AUWE 23, 1998), no. 128 — the volume itself, in the print-check wave: whether it gives a German rendering of this piece, and whether it identifies the composition. (2) Gabbay's catalogues of the Uruk Emesal manuscripts (HES 1 and related work) — not eyeballed; an identification there would name the composition this fragment belongs to. (3) CDLI's record (P349131) — unread; CDLI is still down.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. Nothing of the kind is preserved. The wind that "cuts" at line 5′ is weather in a lament, and is left as weather.
o 1′: [... ] -x ⸢a⸣-[... ] [...] (a trace) [...]
o 2′: [... ] x-x-x-⸢gi⸣ [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
o 3′: [... ] ⸢a⸣-na-aš ŋal₂ i₃-[x]-mi-[... ] why is (it) [...]? (the refrain word a-na-aš, "why?", opens the line)
o 4′: [... ] -x a-na-aš ba-x-[... ] why [...]? (the verb is lost)
o 5′: [... ] -x a-na-aš IM mu-⸢un-kud?⸣ why has the wind cut (it) off(?)
o 5a′: [... ] x-x-x-x ur? x-[... ] [...] (traces) [...]
o 6′: [... ] sar-re-de₃ da ti-x [...] (unglossed in the corpus) [...]
o 7′: [... ] -x-gin₇ i₃-kud a-na-aš ba-[... ] [...] is cut off — why [...]?
o 7a′: [... ] -x-tum dib?-be₂ ze₂-e ka mu-[... ] [...] the wind(?) passes(?) — you [...] the mouth [...] (unglossed in the corpus; rendered from the forms alone, and marked so)
o 8′: [... mu]-lu mu-⸢tin?⸣ x-[... ] the man, the woman [...]
10 served line-units: 0 whole · 4 part · 6 fragment · 0 invented. The part-lines are the two fullest "why?" lines (3′, 5′), the cut-off line (7′), and the man-and-woman line (8′).
Ten broken lines of a lament that keeps asking the same question. Why is the wind cutting? Why — and the tablet breaks off before any answer, if the composition ever gave one. The last preserved words name the pair the question is usually asked for in these laments: the man, the woman. That is all the fragment holds, and the reading holds no more than that.
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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