A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
White, pure, perfect: eleven traces. Eleven traces in the first person of purity.
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, 119 — hand copy no. 119 in Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler 10 (Berlin, 1916-era copy volume: copy only, no transliteration, no translation). Corpus ID: CDLI P342927; served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies) from Sippar. Old Babylonian. Composition: Unidentified. Eleven line-ends, of which the readable ones are all epithets: a hand (šu), purity (kug), whiteness (babbar₂), and one second-person form — "you are [...] perfect" (me-en aš-sa₂) — the shape of a hymn's address with the hymn gone. 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): no edition, translation, or discussion of VS 10, 119 found in the program's tree or in open search under its VS number or CDLI P342927. Doors left on the face: (1) Delnero, SANER 26 (catalogue eyeball outstanding, print-check wave). (2) Cohen, CLAM (1988). (3) CDLI's record (P342927) — unread; CDLI is still down.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. Nothing of the kind is preserved.
o 1′: [... ] ⸢x x⸣ [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
o 2′: [... ] x-ri-gin₇ ⸢šu⸣ x [... ] [...] the hand [...]
o 3′: [... ] ⸢na-mu⸣-ra in-⸢ni⸣-[... ] [...] (unglossed in the corpus) [...]
o 4′: [... ] ⸢x⸣ [... ] [...] (a trace) [...]
o 5′: [... ] ⸢x⸣ [... ] [...] (a trace) [...]
r 1′: [... ] x [... ] [...] (a trace) [...]
r 2′: [... ] x me-en aš-⸢sa₂⸣ x [... ] [...] you are [...] perfect [...]
r 3′: [... ] ⸢di⸣-im ku-ga [... ] [...] pure [...]
r 4′: [... ] babbar₂ [... ] [...] white [...]
r 5′: [... ] ⸢gu⸣-na-zu [... ] [...] (unglossed in the corpus) [...]
r 6′: [... ] ⸢x x x⸣ [... ] [...] (traces) [...]
11 served line-units: 0 whole · 1 part · 10 fragment · 0 invented. The part-line is r 2′ — "you are [...] perfect" — the one place a verb and its epithet stand together.
An address to somebody perfect, pure, and white, whose name stood in the beginnings of the lines. Hymns name their gods early and often; this fragment's god is in the part that broke away. What is left is the praise itself, detached from its object — and the record keeps it that way.
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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