Cylinder seal impression, showing me and the scribe battling the Alster demon.

       Bendt Alster, a noted Sumerologist, recently announced on his website, am-forum.org, that he thought Tablet #36 was actually a missing part of “A Dialogue between Two Women”. Mr. Alster’s “somewhat incomplete” translation has not been published, neither has “A Dialogue between Two Women”, otherwise known as “Dialogue 5”. No publication dates have been announced. (see Mr. Alster's comments )

       I was rather surprised, to say the least. I had been expecting some "learned disputes" about individual words or phrases. . . but this?  I wasn't too worried about it, though. I had already read the tablet, so I already knew what it said; and I knew that the tablet gives many false impressions as to its contents before it's true meaning is finally revealed. Still, I was disappointed. Needless to say, the scribe, who had "waited 4,000 years to be published", wasn't too thrilled about it, either.

       In the meantime, anyone doing an internet search for “Sumerian Shakespeare”, also got a hit on Mr. Aster’s website, listed right below mine, with the sarcastic comment, “The so-called Sumerian Shakespeare …” which publicly (operative word) discredits this website, and prejudices the reader against my translation before he even has a chance to read it. I wrote to Mr. Alster, saying that I was sure he only meant to announce his pending translation, and  that he did not intentionally mean to publicly disparage my own. I asked him politely to please change the wording of the phrase “the so-called Sumerian Shakespeare”. He refused.

       I was fine with the fact that Mr. Alster disagreed with my translation (even if he's wrong). It's the nature of the business; it's also what makes it fun. It's the intentional sarcasm that I objected to.  So I recently sent Mr. Alster another e-mail.  I told him, "Of course you know, this means war."

       If Mr. Alster wants to publicly proclaim my translation to be in error, then he needs to produce, as proof, a complete translation of his own; and not just a few sentences, because any Sumerian sentence taken out of context is subject to a variety of interpretations. The translation needs to be word-for-word, from beginning to end, like mine. It’s the sole criteria. The mere mention of an incomplete unpublished translation, based on a previous incomplete unpublished translation, is not enough.

       So, Mr. Alster, "I’m calling you out!"  I challenge you to a Sumerian Showdown!  If you have a better translation, “Bring it on!”  Publish your translation of this tablet and the so-called “Dialogue between Two Women”. I’ll put my translation up against yours any day of the year. We’ll put the translations side-by-side, and let people decide for themselves what this tablet  is all about.

       I am very curious about this "Dialogue 5". There was something about the appearance of Tablet #36 that made Mr. Alster (and another Sumerologist) think that it was part of a larger set of tablets. If these tablets are indeed a "Dialoge between Two Women", then they are historically important, and he needs to publish them. If, on the other hand, they are from the author of The Great Fatted Bull, then the world needs to know about it. I challenge Mr. Alster to make photos and line-drawings of these tablets available to the academic community. And if Mr. Alster truly wants to promote discussion of "Sumerian female dialogues" then he needs to make them available to the general public, so people will know what they're talking about.

       To deal, in short order, with some of the issues that Mr. Alster has raised:  1) Tablet #36 is not a dialogue, period.  2) It is not part of a dialogue that has ever been spoken by any two women anywhere in the world, and 3) it is not an instructional tool by a scribal school master. I'll admit, this tablet is an education in cuneiform writing; but on this tablet, the story is paramount, it is everything. To say it was written for pedagogic purposes is like saying T. S. Eliot wrote The Wasteland to teach college students how to write poetry. Most importantly, however, if Mr. Alster wants to claim that such an incendiary story (where one king is whipped and another is strangled, and the sex life of a great lord is ridiculed) then he needs to cite one other example where this kind of story was part of a school curriculum in the ancient world.

       Note:  Mr. Alster made his announcement about Tablet #36 on December 7, 2008, (a day that will live in infamy) and he has not yet published his translation.

       In the meantime, the reader can have complete confidence in this translation. I’m not asking anyone to "just take my word for it" about the contents of this tablet. I have done the proper research, and I provide a word-by-word transliteration that is easily verifiable by anyone using the ePSD, the ETCSL, and a Sumerian dictionary. Every word in the transliteration is a commonly accepted definition for its given sign. In the transliteration, I show the sign, it's Sumerian definition, and it's English equivalent. It's all there in black and white. I couldn't have done this if there was anything "iffy" about this translation. Unlike Mr. Alster, I don't just say what this tablet is about; I show what it's about. I can assure the reader, in no uncertain terms, the transliteration is "bullet-proof"; it is absolutely irrefutable.

      The true test of any translation is how well it fits together as a whole. In this translation, the sentences move in precise logical sequence; everything fits exactly with everything else. There are no gaps or inconsistencies, and every word on this tablet refers to the central theme of  “The Great Fatted Bull”. Such a highly organized and complex story cannot be constructed from unrelated writing. It couldn't have happened by accident, nor could it be rendered by misreading a few signs. While it's doubtful that any other context (subject) can be force-fitted onto this tablet, this translation perfectly accommodates two very different contexts (bull and king) simultaneously. It also accounts for the tablet's cryptic encoding. The complexity of the story, the double contexts, and the encoding, give this tablet the crystalline construction of a diamond.

       The encryption is key. This tablet is just like any other coded message. It was designed  to have one meaning, and only one meaning, or to have no meaning at all. This tablet is about The Great Fatted Bull.  It cannot be about anything else.

       So, for the record, I stand by this translation. I can defend every word of it.

       And I will!  To the death!

Gud Gal-Niga.  (Bull Great-Fatted).  The way "Great Fatted Bull" is written and pronounced  in Sumerian.