Marcel
Sigrist, a world renown Sumerologist, could not read the writing. He thought
it was simply “gibberish.” Bendt Alster, a brilliant Sumerologist, thought it was
a “Dialog Between Two Women,” but he could not translate the tablet using this
context. Tablet #36 is actually a political satire. It is the story of The
Great Fatted Bull, the bull who would be king.
In January of 2009, Robert Englund, the director of the CDLI
(the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative) sent me a nice email saying “Your story is compelling, and it is
gratifying to see that web resources are leading to this sort of interest, and
research.” He also sent
a link to the CDLI webpage for Tablet #36 which included the high-resolution
photograph that is shown above.
I immediately recognized Englund’s name because I have one of his books,
"Archaic Bookkeeping. Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in
the Ancient Near East." It is not as dull as it sounds.
Englund and I occasionally corresponded during the next several
years. He always seemed very helpful and friendly.
In January 2014, Englund agreed to give me Secondary Publication
Credit on the CDLI webpage for Tablet #36. I was not eligible for Primary Credit
because my translation wasn’t originally published in a scholarly journal that
was subject to peer review. I sent Englund a copy of my transliteration so he
could post it on the CDLI webpage.
I was very happy. I thought the story of The Great Fatted Bull
would finally get the attention that it truly deserves.
A week later, Englund wrote back and said, “I am afraid this
project is already costing me more effort that I really have time for it... I did have to get this off my desktop… Unfortunately I am no expert in literary or secret lore inscriptions, so that just looking through the text makes my head swim.
Still, I made a couple quick corrections on my own… and I am sorry the existing CDLI version, even if done on the
fly and without credible interpretation, is at such a variance to yours.”
I was appalled when I looked at the
ATF (ASCII Transliteration Format, Englund’s
version of my transliteration).
He had misread many signs, even simple signs like nin and ba. I
sent him a page (with pictures) showing that my reading of the signs was
indeed correct. Englund got a bit testy with me (experts don’t like being
contradicted) so I decided to drop the matter. I didn’t want to offend Englund
and thereby jeopardize my secondary publication credit. Englund had included my
website address on the CDLI page, so I figured the professional Sumerologists
could read my transliteration for themselves and then make up their own minds about
it. I thanked Englund for his efforts on my behalf and for giving me secondary
credit.
In April 2015, I translated the stories
of The Princess Wife and The Great Fatted Jackass. Both stories were originally
classified as Dialogs Between Women. They are actually variations of The Great Fatted Bull, with
many sentences in common. Like the story of The Great Fatted Bull, they are political
satires, with the same use of puns, “trick signs”, and clever word play to
disguise the meaning of the tablets. The meanings were disguised because it was
dangerous to ridicule great lords and kings.
I wrote to Englund in September 2015,
stating that the two stories prove that my translation of The Great Fatted Bull
had been right all along. I respectfully asked to be given primary publication
credit. I also requested that my original transliteration be used as the basis for the ATF (rather than Englund’s version).
Englund petulantly broke off
communication with me. I sent one more email. I pointed out that the three tablets
“have great historic importance.” I also said, “The tablets have their own
history. Like it or not, you are now a part of that history. It would be
regrettable if you now become the Lord Chesterfield of these tablets. You may
want to reconsider.”
I thought maybe I should publicly
refute Englund’s ATF, but I decided against it. I knew it would be an
embarrassment to him and I still hoped he would eventually acknowledge my
transliteration.
I did not hear from Englund until February 2019. He wrote and
asked me a minor question about one of my new webpages. It seemed like a pretext,
like an excuse to reach out to me and to put our little spat behind us. I was
only too happy to oblige. I wrote back and said it was good to hear from him
again.
Over the course of the next several months, I sometimes thought,
“Maybe I should ask Englund to reconsider his decision and to give me proper
credit for my translations.”
Robert Englund passed away on May 24, 2020 after a lengthy battle
with cancer. Had I known he was running out of time, I would have pleaded with
him not to end up on the wrong side of history.
Tablet #36. Line-drawing by Marcel Sigrist.
In November 2020, quite by
accident, I discovered that the CDLI page for Tablet #36 gave primary publication credit to
“CDLI Literary 000771, ex. 027,” my secondary credit was eliminated, and I was only
given credit for the ATF source (which I didn’t agree with). Also included was a
reference to the elusive ETCSL 5.04.05 Dialogue between Two Women B, which had
not been there before. In addition, a search for “CDLI Literary 000771, ex.
027” revealed 60-something tablets that were now classified as Dialogs Between
Women.
I knew that Ms. Emile Page-Perron
was one of the new directors at the CDLI. Ten years ago she wrote a nice email
thanking me for my “contribution to the field.” In December I sent her a very long
email. The highlights are listed below:
“I am no longer satisfied with
Secondary credit. I want Primary credit for The Great Fatted Bull, The Princess
Wife, and The Great Fatted Jackass... I know my translations were not
originally published in scholastic journals, but I don’t think it too greatly
damages the academic integrity of the CDLI to make an exception for these three
exceptional tablets − among the hundreds of thousands of tablets on
the website. It is certainly no more injurious than the current CDLI pages that
are so egregiously in error.”
“Ten years is long enough. It is
time that my translations be either confirmed or refuted. These tablets are too
important to be ignored.”
“Please send an email-blast to the
world’s Assyriologists stating that the CDLI is considering giving me primary
credit for the tablets and asking if anyone has an alternative translation to
please submit it by a certain date. If the Assyriologists do not respond, then
let their silence be their consent… This will pass for peer review of my
translations.”
“I am looking for someone to be an
advocate for the tablets... I am not asking for my sake alone. I am also asking
on behalf of the scribes who wrote these political satires (at great personal
risk to themselves) … Please help.”
Ms. Page-Perron did not grant me
courtesy of a reply, so I forwarded the email to the other directors of the
CDLI (Jürgen Renn, Jacob L. Dahl, and Bertrand Lafont) and asked them to please
help in resolving this matter.
Mr. Dahl wrote back, speaking for
the others. “It is not CDLI’s responsibility to promote this or that
translation over another, instead CDLI follow best practices in the field of Assyriology and in the wider field of the Humanities and add data as
it sees appropriate.”
I replied, “It seems to me that the
CDLI is already promoting one translation over another by labeling my
translation as a Dialog Between Women. Also, the CDLI was not following “best
practices” when the nameless “CDLI Literary 000771, ex. 027” arbitrarily
discredited my work and eliminated my Secondary credit (and the reference to my
website).” I also informed him that Englund’s ATF was seriously in error.
Mr. Dahl told me, “I have removed
the reference to you in the catalog so that you are not burdened by the
association to an ATF file you find faulty and that you do not claim.”
The CDLI did much more than that. They
deleted the entire page about Tablet #36 (!) and the Archival page. And the 60+
references to “CDLI Literary 000771, ex. 027” completely disappeared!
For almost two weeks The Great
Fatted Bull was MIA on the CDLI. Then he suddenly reappeared again. I guess the people at the CDL realized they had overstepped the line when they deleted the
record in the first place.
Of the 60+ references to “CDLI
Literary 000771, ex. 027,” only one remained... The one where she is listed
as the primary publication credit for Tablet #36… Hmm.
The administrators at
the CDLI have left me no other choice. I must defend my work. The only way I
can do this is to publicly refute Englund’s ATF. I should have done it years
ago. I believe that Englund’s ATF is the main reason the professional
Sumerologists have not verified my translation of Tablet #36. After all, if the
director of the CDLI did not endorse my translation, why should they?
Here is a list of Robert Englund’s errors in his ATF. Misread
signs are highlighted in red. The sign definitions that Englund arbitrarily
changed are highlighted in gray.
Englund misread a total of 41 signs
(!) and randomly changed the definitions of 13 others. With the
misread signs and altered definitions, Englund made “corrections” in 24 of the 32 sentences on Tablet #36. As a
result, 75% of the sentences were rendered unintelligible. I repeat, that is
75%.
It was a mistake for Englund to assume that I cannot read Sumerian
signs. I provide a complete Sign
List for Tablet #36, with pictures of every single sign on the tablet. For the
“compressed signs,” which are difficult to recognize, I also include one or two
examples from other tablets on the CDLI where the sign is written the exact
same way. It is actually Englund who misread the signs, even simple signs like nin
and ba.
In Robert Englund's Error List, I refute Englund’s
fractured ATF line by line and sign for sign. I urge you to read the page. You
don’t have to be an expert in Sumerology. You need only look at the signs to
know that Englund read them wrong.
Some of the errors that Englund made
were subtle. Some of them were not so subtle. Here are a couple of the more obvious
signs:
de6 ba de6 ba {d} Suen
In line o6, Englund misinterpreted de6
ba as {d} Suen, the name of a god.
usar
usar numun2
Englund misidentified usar as numun2 in line r15. It
isn’t easy to mistake these two signs.
Although I say Englund made “numerous errors” and he “misread the
signs,” there is more to the story than that. Englund was a brilliant
Sumerologist. It is absolutely inconceivable that he could unknowingly
make so many rookie mistakes on one single tablet. I therefore suggest that Englund’s
ATF was a deliberate effort to discredit my transliteration without disproving
it.
You don’t believe me? Let’s look at the possibilities:
1) Incompetence: Did Englund misread the signs because he didn’t
know how to properly read cuneiform writing? Obviously, this idea is ridiculous.
Of course Englund knew how read Sumerian signs,
which leads us to the second possibility.
2) Carelessness: Did Englund misread the signs because he was
in a hurry? By his own admission, he did the transliteration “on the fly” in
his haste to “get it off his Desktop.” Englund has thousands of
transliterations on the CDLI. Was he careless with all of them, or just this
one?
Either way, this is not merely a case of carelessness. Remember, I
pointed out the misread signs to Englund six years ago. He had plenty of time
to correct his ATF, but he did not change one single sign, not even the most
obvious errors like the ones shown above. So, Englund stood by his
transliteration. The ATF was his final word on Tablet #36. This leaves only one
more possibility:
3) Deliberate sabotage: Englund could not disprove my transliteration and neither could the other
Sumerologists (because it is absolutely irrefutable). Instead, Englund
deliberately misrepresented my transliteration to make it look like I didn’t
know what I was doing. After all, who would people believe? Robert Englund, the
director of the CDLI… or me, the unknown amateur that no one ever heard of.
Positive proof that it was Englund’s deliberate intention to
discredit my translation is seen in his haphazard changing of random sign
names.
Even when Englund agreed that I read a sign correctly, he still
tried to hobble my translation by assigning a different name to the sign. As
explained in Robert Englund’s Error List, changing the sign name alters its
meaning. I carefully chose a sign name that fit into the translation of a
sentence. Englund arbitrarily substituted an alternate sign name, making the
sentence incoherent. He did this a total of 13 different times. The only
reason to change a sign name is to make it fit into a known translation. However,
Englund did not translate a single sentence of this tablet, so he had absolutely
no reason to arbitrarily change any of the sign names.
There are two other ways that Englund damaged my transliteration: 1) by arbitrarily changing the "word strings," and 2) by destroying the "great fatted" context of The Great Fatted Bull (see Robert Englund's Error List).
You may be asking, “Why he would he do
this? What reason did he have?”
I believe he was defending his
colleagues (Alster and Sigrist, among others) and defending his profession by
demonstrating that only PhD Sumerologists are qualified to read cuneiform
tablets. Whatever his reason, he had no excuse for what he did. It is nothing
short of scandalous. I know of no other case in the history of academia where a
respected scholar used his power and influence to discredit a major work of art
without producing a single shred of evidence. In so doing, Englund dishonored
himself and his profession.
I’m sure this page has offended
many of Englund’s friends and colleagues. If so, then the only way they can
vindicate Englund (and discredit me) is to produce a coherent translation of his
ATF, but Englund pretty much guaranteed this will never happen. By his own
words, his transliteration is “without credible
interpretation.” No one can translate Englund’s
ATF, not even Englund could translate it. That was the whole purpose of the
operation, to make Tablet #36 unreadable. Meanwhile, Englund’s friends and
colleagues can try their best to rationalize his motives and his methods when
he mis-transliterated Tablet #36.
As the founder and director of the
CDLI, Englund’s contribution to the field is immeasurable (I could not have
translated Tablet #36 without the CDLI), but by attempting to discredit the story of The
Great Fatted Bull, Englund has tarnished his legacy.
Englund’s successors at the CDLI
(Renn, Dahl, Lafont, and Page-Perron) have chosen to stand by Englund on the
wrong side of history. They took away my publication credit, alleged that the
story of The Great Fatted Bull is actually a Dialog Between Women, and deleted
the record for Tablet #36 (then un-deleted it), all under the guise of “not
promoting this or that translation over another.” When I asked for their help,
they refused to lift a finger to correct the problem (which they themselves
created). If they want to be the Lords and Lady Chesterfield of this story,
then so be it. Let that be their legacy.
As for you, “CDLI Literary 000771, ex.
027,” whoever you are, lots of luck trying to convert Tablet #36 into a Dialog
Between Two Women. Alster couldn’t do it, neither can you.
It’s bad enough that Englund and
company are denying me proper credit for my work, but in so doing, they are also
denying “primary publication credit” to the nameless scribe who wrote this
wonderful story. He is the true author of the story. I am just the translator. He wrote this literary masterpiece 4,000 years ago. It is the world’s
first murder mystery. More important, it is also the world’s first political
satire. It was dangerous for the scribe to write a tablet that ridiculed great lords
and kings. The Shepherd Brother gets flogged for saying the exact words that
are written on Tablet #36. The scribe risked everything to tell this story, and
this is the thanks he gets from the CDLI.
But that’s not the half of it.
What’s worse, far worse, is the fact that Englund and the CDLI attempted to discredit
this story and to keep it from ever reaching a wider audience. The tale of The Great
Fatted Bull has universal appeal
and historic importance. It not just a Sumerian story, it is a story for all of
humanity. It is not just Sumerian literature, it is world literature.
Robert Englund and the directors of the CDLI tried
to deny people the opportunity of reading this wonderful story, not just the
people in the world today, but future generations as well. And that is
unforgivable.
I predict that despite the best
efforts of Robert Englund and the CDLI, the Great Fatted Bull will live
forever in world literature, so in seeking to discredit this story, they only
succeeded in discrediting themselves.
They should have known better than
to stand in the way of the Great Fatted
Bull.
