A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.
A fate scrap in the first person. A scrap about fate, spoken in the first person.
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, 157 — hand copy no. 157 in Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler 10 (Berlin, 1916-era copy volume: copy only, no transliteration, no translation). Corpus ID: CDLI P342965; served to OBEL (Old Babylonian Emesal Liturgies) from Sippar. Old Babylonian. Composition: Unidentified. The obverse's only readable word is Namtar — fate, the fate-demon — standing twice at line-ends (-ta-re, "of fate"); the reverse is a run of first-person line-ends, every line closing on -ŋu₁₀, "my/me": my single one … covers me. A prayer or lament spoken by one voice to, or about, fate. 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, 157 found in the program's tree or in open search under its VS number or CDLI P342965. No translated Namtar composition matches what survives; the identification stays open rather than guessed. Doors left on the face: (1) Delnero, SANER 26 (catalogue eyeball outstanding, print-check wave). (2) Cohen, CLAM (1988). (3) CDLI's record (P342965) — unread; CDLI is still down.
Dragon/serpent flag: none. Namtar is fate, not a serpent; no dragon word stands on the fragment.
o 1′: [... ] x x [...] (traces) [...]
o 2′: [... ] KU A BA [...] (sign names only in the corpus) [...]
o 3′: [... ] ⸢na⸣-ta-re [...] of fate (Namtar) [...]
o 4′: [... ] ⸢MU⸣ NA [...] (traces) [...]
o 5′: [... ]-⸢ta⸣-re [...] of fate [...]
o 6′: [... ]-ke₄ [...] (a trace) [...]
o 7′: [... ]-⸢re⸣ [...] (a trace) [...]
r 1′: [... ] x [...] (a trace) [...]
r 2′: [... ] di-li-ŋu₁₀ [...] my single one [...]
r 3′: [... ] x-ir-ŋu₁₀ [...] my [...] (traces)
r 4′: [... ] x-ŋu₁₀ [...] my [...] (traces)
r 5′: [... ]-⸢bi?⸣ du-la-ŋu₁₀ [...] it covers me [...]
r 6′: [... ]-⸢a⸣-ŋu₁₀ [...] my [...] (traces)
r 7′: [... ]-⸢a⸣-ŋu₁₀ [...] my [...] (traces)
r 8′: [... ] x-ba-ŋu₁₀ [...] my [...] (traces)
15 served line-units: 0 whole · 2 part · 13 fragment · 0 invented. The part-lines are "my single one" (r 2′) and "it covers me" (r 5′) — the two places the first-person voice closes a form.
The most worn tablet of tonight's eighteen, and still it keeps a posture: fate named on one side, and on the other a voice counting everything as mine — my single one, covering me. The beginnings of all fifteen lines are gone, so the prayer, if it was a prayer, survives only as its endings. It is built anyway, at traces-plus class, because the endings are real and they are all this tablet will ever have to say from this desk.
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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