PW1: The original story
of the Princess Wife (tablet BE 31,28)
PW2: The sequel to the Princess
Wife (this tablet, MS 3228)
PW3: The whole story of
the Princess Wife (tablets Be 31,28 and MS 3228 combined)
GFB: The story of The
Great Fatted Bull (Tablet #36)
GFJ: The story of the
Great Fatted Jackass (fragmentary tablet SEM 114)
Trick signs:
All of the tablets listed above are political satires that
ridicule lords and kings. This was a dangerous thing to do in the ancient
world, so the scribes used “trick signs” to disguise the meaning of the texts,
making it difficult (but not impossible) to read the tablets (see Sumerian
Trick Signs on this website).
MS 3228 uses many of the same trick signs:
MahX = AL = mah2 = mah = “great.” MahX appears on line o10 and
possibly on the fragmentary line r15.
GemeX = “a female worker, servant, or slave.” Lines o3 and o13.
HenburX = “henbur/grain-his.” Line r8.
DamX:
Each of the tablets has a main trick sign. On Tablet #36 the main
trick sign is mahX. On tablet BE 31,28, it is nu-nus. The scribe of MS 3228
introduces a new trick sign: damX.
mystery sign
I was suspicious of this sign right from the get-go. It seemed the
scribe was over using it. Overworking a sign in this manner is usually a hint
that it is a trick sign. The same was true for mahX and nu-nus.
Jana Matuszak has all six occurrences of this sign listed as u3.
This is a logical conclusion because it looks a lot like u3 (kinda, sorta).
u3
U3 = “and/but/also.” It most often means the word “and.” However,
the scribes seldom used this sign. The word “and” usually had to be inferred by
the reader. For example, in my English translation of Tablet #36, I used the
word “and” thirteen different times, but it is not written once on the tablet.
I thought it was highly unlikely that a scribe would use this sign six times on one
small tablet (MS 3228). U3 isn’t used six times on even the longest literary
tablets.
Notice that the “box” section of u3 is a perfect square. It was
sometimes compressed (right) to save space on a line that is crowded with many
signs, but it was seldom elongated.
Except for the first example, all of these signs are written
longer than normal and the interior horizontal lines go only through the left
side of the box. This makes the signs look a lot like dam, “spouse.”
dam
In the Old Babylonian version of dam, the reverse cuneus on the
right is replaced with a vertical line to make the sign easier to write. This
usually makes the sign seem longer than u3. It looks more rectangular than square.
The similarity of u3 and dam is shown on this fragment of a tablet
(CDLI# 254301). Notice that dam is longer than u3.
u3
dam
damX
On tablet MS 3228, these signs look like a combination of u3 and
dam. The sign is used both ways on the tablet. It means u3 in line o17 (“but”)
and line r5 (“and”). In all the other occurrences it means dam, “spouse.” In
line o17 it means “husband” and it means “wife” in lines o7, o11, and r17.
One of the reasons why I think PW1 was written by a woman is the
use of the trick sign nu-nus (“woman/ not woman”). It seems like the kind of
trick sign that a female scribe would invent. See the page about Nu-nus.
The
use of damX (“wife”) also seems like the kind of trick sign that a woman would
use.
Another scribal trick:
The scribe of MS 3228 introduces another trick that isn’t seen on
the other tablets:
Sometimes the signs are written slightly out of order. Nothing major, not
enough to make the sentences incomprehensible, but just enough to keep the
reader off balance. This occurs in lines o17, r7, r13, and r17. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that some scribe would eventually think of this trick.
Scribal wordplay:
nu mu kalam (nu = no/not, mu = man, kalam = Land/land/people)
All of these satirical tablets include some clever wordplay, partly to obscure the meaning of the stories, and partly just for the fun of it. On this tablet, the scribe uses variations of the repeating phrase: nu mu kalam. It alternately means: "man with no land," "not a man of the Land (of Sumer), and "not a man of the people." It is very clever.
Many signs in a row:
All of the tablets use a string of the same sign repeated many times in a row. This makes the tablet hard ro read and thus obscures the meaning of the text. It is used four times on this tablet, as explained below.
Transliteration:
See a copy of Jana Matuszak’s line-drawing of tablet MS 3228: Obverse and Reverse.
As usual, I offer a “simultaneous translation/transliteration”
for the tablet. I show a picture of each sentence as it is written on the
tablet. Below each sign is the Sumerian word (transliteration). Below the
Sumerian word is the English word (translation). This format makes it easy to check my
work.
See a copy of the translation/transliteration for tablet MS
3228: Obverse and Reverse. They will
display in separate tabs. You may want to refer them when you read the Notes on
the Transliteration (below).
I do not offer a sign list for this tablet because: 1) I have already demonstrated my ability to
read Sumerian signs (see the sign lists for Tablet #36 and BE 31,28). 2) The signs on MS 3228 are not “compressed”
so they are easy to recognize. And 3) I agree with most of Matuszak’s reading
of the signs (except where noted). Our transliterations differ mainly in the
sign definitions.
o6 This sentence is lacking a
negation (nu) for “women.” It should read, “Mulu has no women.” That’s
because this sentence is a copy of line o16 from PW1, “… he is a man
without power, without women, and without virtue.” The problem is the scribe substituted the sign munus
(woman) for nu-nus, forgetting that nu-nus is a trick sign that has a built-in
negation (woman/no woman). Very interesting. See Nu-nus for an explanation of
the sign.
o7 DamX: This
sentence confirmed my suspicion that damX/u3 is a trick sign. In PW1, line o17
is “Like a storm, Mulu flies to his father Bantu, the Supreme Lord.”
Here on tablet MS 3228, the scribe substituted damX for the word “father.”
Thus, “Like a storm, Mulu flies to the wife of Bantu, the Supreme Lord.”
Any definition of u3 (“and/but/also”) doesn’t fit into the sentence, whereas
“wife” fits perfectly. This was a hint from the scribe that damX/u3 is a trick
sign. The beauty of a good trick sign is there is always a hint to its true
meaning. I had been looking for the sign for “wife” on this tablet (after all,
this is the story of the Princess Wife) but I couldn’t find it until I
read this sentence. Then damX occurred two more times as "wife" and then once as "husband."
o13 [Lack]:
“My trusted maidservant has told me all about your lack of character.” Versions of this sentence appear on PW1 line r2 and GFJ line r5. The last signs
on both PW1 and PW2 is damaged, but the corresponding line on GFJ shows lal at
the end of the line, meaning “a lack of character.”
o17
[Suitable]: The signs are damaged and unreadable in the middle of the line so I
inserted the generic word “suitable,” i.e., “She decides he would make a suitable
lord and husband.”
r5 The scribes
of these satirical tablets love putting three or four of the same signs in a
row and giving them different definitions. It occurs 4 times on this tablet
(lines r5, r6, r7, and r11). It occurs 3 times on GFB (lines o7, o8, and r15). It
also occurs on PW1 (line r11). This makes the tablets difficult to read and it
helps to disguise the meaning of the tablets. The writing looks wild on the
page. Visually, it looks out of control; it looks
like "gibberish," which discourages a serious attempt to
translate it.
r7 The
possibilities are endless for these four signs in a row, so I opted for a
generic translation: “He quickly became a very very fat man,” although this clearly
does not do justice to the obvious hyperbole of the sentence.
r8 The scribe
uses both versions of henburX in this sentence. Left: henburX = “grain-his.” Right: henburX (with only one vertical line) =
henbur grain.
r11 Urta
(barley). Technically, urta is just a single stalk of barley, not a large
quantity. In this way, the scribe mentions the plundered barley without being
too obvious about it, since urta (IB) has a variety of other meanings. Urta is
also mentioned in line o12.
Gi4-in (ES, geme2, "female servant or slave"): I translated it as "Zuzu's land and his barley are turned over to his slave women." It could just as easily translate as "Zuzu's land and his barley are turned over to her servant girl," i.e., the trusted servant girl of the princess wife.
r12 La-ba
(“no/not”) di (“decide”). Clearly, the princess wife is deciding Zuzu’s
destiny, so I translated it as “decide against.”
A A?
r16 The sign
on the right looks like a šešig version of the sign A on the left, meaning it
has additional markings (Winkelhakens). However, there is no such thing as a
šešig version of A. I believe the sign merely has some accidental markings.
Sur5: The definition
for sur5 is “a harness team (of draft animals or workers); member of a team,
team-worker.” This opens the possibility that Zuzu is in a harness. This makes
sense because he is a donkey. However, I did not choose this interpretation
because it is an awkward fit with the next sentence where he is measuring the fields,
sowing grain, etc., where wearing a harness is not required. Sur5 also opens
the possibility that Mulu is the other half of the harnessed team, but I did
not choose this interpretation because Mulu was strangled to death early in the
story. After that, he is never heard from again.
In conclusion:
I have often said that the scribes who wrote the stories of The Great Fatted Bull and The Princess Wife were literary geniuses. You don't believe me? Write something better. See A Masterpiece.
Once you understand the tablets at the sign level, you can appreciate the fact that the scribes are literary geniuses, not just for the quality of the stories they tell, but also for their sophisticated use of the language. No modern writer is their equal. I should know this because I was a Lit major in college.
I have also said that I believe that the scribe who wrote The Princess Wife (parts 1 and 2) was a woman. Was it the same woman? Or two? Did the know each other? Were they collaborators?
In any case, there has never been a better woman writer in all of Women's Literature.
mystery sign
u3
dam
