“What is not brought, so the city is pure”

A reading, published with its checks still open. A Vigslist translation.

“What is not brought, so the city is pure” — an incantation fragment. Seven lines of an incantation of withheld offerings and a purified city.

Published as a reading. No first-translation claim is made for this piece: a scholar’s unpublished English rendering stands on its record, and the credit question named in the notes below is still open.

Object: Ist Ni 13240, Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul. Old Babylonian, Nippur. CDLI P343576; copy ISET 1, p. 217 (pl. 159) — a member of the ISET 1 incantation cluster Ni 13215–13240. No image served anywhere — this reading rests on Peterson's transliteration alone.

Record state worked from: live eBL record Ni.13240 re-fetched 2026-10-22 via the Fragmentarium API; saved at . Transliteration by Peterson, entered 2024-08-21; revisions 2024-08-21, 2026-01-15, 2026-05-27, 2026-05-28 — the record is still being revised by its author. Seven lines, complete short lines as the Wave 2 census found them; 7 #tr.en lines, unchanged in count from the census.

Print status (dossier check, this wave): the record's curated references are COPY (Kramer, ISET 1, pl. 159) and DISCUSSION — Rubio 1999, p. 327; uncurated traces: Rubio's 1999 dissertation (Sumerian Literary Texts from the Time of the Third Dynasty of Ur, PhD), p. 341, and PSD 1/2 A2 (1994), p. 96 (a dictionary citation). No EDITION typing anywhere; no published translation located on the open web (search run 2026-10-22). Named residual, on the face of this reading: what Rubio's dissertation does with this tablet at pp. 327/341 — discussion or translation — sits behind a library door this desk cannot reach. Under Richard's dissertation ruling (2026-10-20), dissertation-only English is in scope with the author credited; this witness reading is desk-complete, but any public release holds until Rubio pp. 327/341 are eyeballed, so his name can be credited for exactly what he did — no more, no less.

Method (drawer-class law): the renderings below are ours, built from Peterson's transliteration sign by sign. His #tr.en lines were compared only after each of our renderings was formed; agreements and every divergence, with its reason, are recorded in §3. His notebook lines are never reproduced as our text.

1. The reading

Obverse (every line's beginning lost except where noted)

• 1′. [ … ] … the en who has spoken … — KA UD-da legible but not construed (see §3).
• 2′. … is Enlil's.
• 3′. He does not bring onions(?).
• 4′. … did not bring the eša-flour(?) …
• 5′. The junior plowman does not bring barley.

Reverse

• 6′. It is so the great man eats pure bread.
• 7′. It is so the city is pure.
• (rest of reverse missing)

What the fragment is: a small ritual logic in seven short lines. Around an en of Enlil, three bringings are negated — onions(?), eša-flour(?), and barley, which the junior plowman does not bring — and the text closes on the result the negations serve: the great man eats pure bread, and the city is pure. Whether the withheld goods are refused as impure, or withheld because the rite is a fast, the clay does not say, and this reading does not guess.

2. Counts

• Preserved line-units: 7. Rendered in whole: 5 (2′, 3′, 5′, 6′, 7′ — short lines complete as clauses; restored signs stand inside words at 5′ and are Peterson's, flagged in his ATF). Rendered in part: 2 (1′ — a phrase construed, its opening group unconstrued; 4′ — verb phrase construed around broken signs). Fragments: 0. Invented: 0.
• Peterson's #tr.en exists on 7 lines — every line of the fragment.

3. Comparison with Peterson's renderings — agreements and divergences

Agreements (independently reached): 3′ onions(?) not brought (his "(?)" on the lexeme sum — onion or garlic — kept); 5′ the junior plowman and the barley, whole; 6′ the great man and the pure food, in substance; 7′ the city and its purity, in substance.

Divergences, with reasons:

• 1′ — the interrogative is Peterson's, not the clay's. Peterson renders "who is the en priest(ess) who spoke/acted(?)". What survives is [x] KA UD-da | en ib-dug₄-ga — "the en who has spoken." No interrogative marker stands in the preserved signs, so we print the phrase without the question and leave KA UD-da unconstrued: ka is "mouth/word," ud-da could be temporal ("at daybreak"), and any combination is a guess at this break. His "(?)" honesty is matched by our refusal, and the difference is recorded rather than smoothed.
• 2′ — the copula stands in the signs. {d}en-lil-la₂-kam is genitive + copula: "is Enlil's." Peterson prints "of Enlil." We keep the copula the clay carries; the sense is the same.
• 4′ — ŠE.TIR. Peterson glosses "(deified) grain/eša flour?" We render "the eša-flour(?)" and keep his question mark on the lexeme; the broken LU x between the grain word and the verb is construed by neither.
• 6′ — ninda is bread. Peterson prints "pure food"; ninda is bread (food by extension). We print "pure bread" and note the range here.
• 7′ — pure, not purified. ku₃ is "pure"; Peterson's "pur(ified)" imports a process the signs do not name. We print "is pure" and record the shade.

4. Dragon / serpent scan

None. No ušumgal, no muš, no mušḫuššu, no bašmu, no serpent-god name stands on this fragment. (sum, "onions(?)," is a food word, not a serpent; the scan was run and is clean.)

5. Standing

Witness reading, drawer class, labeled from its first line. No first-translation claim is made or implied; all seven lines were already Englished in Peterson's unpublished working data, and the composition — an unidentified incantation of withheld offerings and a purified city — remains unpublished. Release additionally holds on the Rubio pages named above.

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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