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. No first-translation claim is made for this piece; the wording above is an English rendering 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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