Sumerian Shakespeare
Transliteration: The Princess Wife
Some of the cuneiform signs on tablet BE 31,28. (CDLI record P345102).
In 1914, Stephen H. Langdon wrote a scholarly paper about an obscure cuneiform tablet
called BE 31,28. The tablet is owned by the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Langdon classified it as a literary tablet, as A Dialogue between Two Women, but he never published a complete translation of it. That’s because he couldn’t read the entire tablet, so most of the writing remained untranslatable. BE 28 is officially entitled “Dialogue between
fPN and fPN,” where fPN means female Personal Name, which shows how little of the tablet was translated since even the names of the two protagonists wasn’t known. Langdon was a world renowned Sumerologist, an expert in the field. He could translate complicated literary tablets, and yet he could not read this one simple tablet.
Throughout the years BE 28 made the scholarly rounds. Many prominent Sumerologists attempted to translate this tablet, but without success. They speculated on the meaning of various sentences, but they could not make any sense of the tablet as a whole. The sentences never coalesced into a single cohesive story.
The same is true for Tablet #36 in the Library of Congress. It had been around for 100 years and the experts couldn’t translate it either.
In December 2008, I posted a translation of Tablet 36, the story of The Great Fatted Bull.
The very next day, December 7, a date that will live in infamy, Bendt Alster, a world famous Sumerologist, announced that Tablet #36 wasn’t really about a great fatted bull. He said
it was actually a missing part of the Dialogue between Two Women, based on Langdon’s
incomplete, unpublished translation and Alster’s own “somewhat incomplete manuscript”
that had also never been published. We had a big fight about it (via email).
So I posted a new page on this website where I challenged him to a “Sumerian Showdown!”, my translation against his. I hoped to provoke Alster into attempting to disprove my
translation, and failing that, he would be forced to confirm it. I said if these tablets are indeed
a "Dialogue between Two Women," then they are of great historical importance, here in the Feminist Era, and he needs to publish them. I said this because I wanted to see why he thought the two tablets were related. Was BE 28 a continuation of The Great Fatted Bull?
I also asked him to publish the line-drawing of the tablet, but he refused.
Needless to say, Alster could not convert the story of The Great Fatted Bull into a Dialogue between Two Women, and neither was he able to offer a complete translation of BE 28.
That was seven years ago. Just recently I finally saw a copy of the line-drawing for BE 28,
and I immediately knew why Alster thought the tablets were two separate parts of the
same story.
Many of the sentences occur word for word on both tablets. In addition, both tablets use
many of the same "trick signs," such as mahX and gemeX (explained below) to disguise the meaning of the texts. That's because both stories are political satires about lords and kings. Since ridiculing kings was a dangerous thing to do, the scribes deliberately made the tablets difficult to read – to keep their meanings secret. That is why the professional Sumerologists were unable to decipher the tablets. The tablets were meant to fool even other Sumerians.
I was able to translate this tablet only because I had already "decoded" Tablet #36, so I
wasn't fooled by the trick signs. As soon as I saw tablet BE 28 I knew it was a story about
the Great Fatted Something, though at first I didn't know what. Soon afterwards, when I saw anše in line r4, I quickly realized that it's the story of The Great Fatted Donkey. However,
I entitled it The Princess Wife because she is the star of the show. If you want to read
a version of The Great Fatted Donkey, you can always check out my translation of SEM 114,
the story of The Great Fatted Jackass.
When I first published my translation of Tablet #36, the story of The Great Fatted Bull,
it was quite the anomaly because there were no other tablets like it. Tablets BE 31,28
and SEM 114 prove that my reading of the signs was correct all along.
Transliteration of tablet BE 28 31, the story of The Princess Wife.
by Jerald Jack Starr
If this is your first time reading a Sumerian transliteration, you may want to read the explanatory comments at the beginning of the Transliteration for Tablet #36.
See the entire line-drawing of the tablet with line numbers or without line numbers.
Below, click on the underscored line number to magnify the drawing of each line.
# = damaged but readable sign x = damaged unreadable sign [...] = missing signs
! = miswritten sign {...} = prefix or suffix (ES) = Emesal dialect PN = personal name
Obverse:
o1a #? a ak šu-um-du-um mu- ni inim#- dug3
? to act lip (ES, nundum) name his/her word sweet
o1b ur nu za3 mu-lu gam kalag #?
servant-without-equal PN bow down powerful ?
The sign inim is partially damaged, with just the “head” of the sign remaining.
In the Sumerian format, the indentation of the second part of the line shows that it is
a continuation of the first part.
o2 ki-ma an ze2-ir lu2- kal-la nu- te
earth heaven feel worried man- strong not- near
o3 eš- ir- -da zu2-zu2 na- guru3- la
much-plunder-with PN man- imbued- wealth
Guru3 is often used as a modifier meaning “to bear, carry, to be imbued with, to be loaded.” Thus, man-imbued-wealth becomes “wealthy man.”
Zuzu's name could be interpreted as Zuh-zuh (the same signs but with different definitions and pronunciations) meaning "steal-steal."
o4 igi umun ze2 la-na- lum ze2 šu-na-tam ba-na-am3 ba gi- ni
behold lord you wealth-man-satisfied you authority-man-trusted giving-man rations verdict-his
I went crazy looking for a sign that looked like the first one in this sentence. Then I realized
it was actually two signs joined together, igi and umun (ES, en). Four of the signs in this sentence are joined together in this same way, some of which are merged across each other. There are so many joined signs that I thought maybe they were some sort of “ligatures”
(signs that are "tied" together and pronounced in reverse order, like lugal, which is written
gal-lu2 but pronounced lu2-gal). As it turns out, they are just normal signs. Perhaps they are merged together to save space on the line because there are so many signs crowded into the sentence. On the other hand, perhaps they were written this way to help obscure the context
of the tablet, to disguise the secret meaning of the story.
Speaking of which: U (umun) is a seldom-used alternative sign for en, meaning “lord.” It is definitely used to obscure the fact that the story is mocking great lords and kings. In this way,
it is like Lu2-mahX on Tablet #36, which is used to disguise the “king” context in the story of The Great Fatted Bull, as described in the Transliteration.
o5 šaḫ2 ka-a gu7 gu7 zi2 mur-i ka-a šu eš2-la2-a
pig mouth-in food cut fodder-captured mouth-in hand choke-in/on
Many sentences on this tablet also occur on Tablet #36, the story of The Great Fatted Bull,
and on tablet SEM 114, the story of The Great Fatted Jackass. In this transliteration, I don’t point out all of the occurrences because there are so many of them. I mention them only
when they are relevant to the discussion at hand.
This line is lacking a verb meaning "to place" the food in his mouth, so I used the verb from
the corresponding line on Tablet #36 (r4). Du3 means "to drive in," which in the context
of the sentence is interpreted as "to cram." He crams the food into his mouth and chokes on it.
o6 da-gu10 gu3 ka aĝ2-(ES, niĝ2)- gu7-gu7 šu- da- bi eš2-dab5#-ba
side-my cry out mouth thing(s) to eat (food) hands-with-these to-grasp
The first part of this sentence is written da-ĝu10, “my flanks” but I translated it as da-ĝu10 lu, “my flanks grow fat” because that’s the way it’s written on Tablet #36 (line r5). The lu sign is missing in the above sentence. On both tablets, lu (defined as “abundant”) means “to be fat.”
Gu3: “to cry out, often said of animals.” The definition of this sign changes depending on which animal is mentioned. A bull bellows, a lion roars, a donkey brays, etc.
o7 ĝi6 dim2 sa2-sa2 ni2-ba nigin na-ta utul2 gug2-munu4 ir-ir
night forms rivals by themselves wander man-fromlarge bowl cakes-malted plunder
ir = plunder/steal. The sentence is written “a man is plundering a bowl of malted cakes,” but
I translated it as “a man is stealing a bowl of malted cakes.” “Plundering” is more meaningful
in the context of the tablet, but “plundering a bowl of malted cakes” would be confusing for
a first-time reader
o8a uĝ3 ba- bi eš2- gu3 mahX sig3 gin6
people ration these to- cry out great burning indigestion permanent
MahX (AL/mah2) is the trick sign on Tablet #36, the story of The Great Fatted Bull. It is used to obscure the “king” context of the story, as explained in line o3 of the Transliteration. It is also used on SEM 114, The Great Fatted Jackass, in line o1.
For a description of all the trick signs on the tablets, see Sumerian Trick Signs.
o8b kiri3 kiri3- mu5 la-ba-ni-ur la2-la2-{e}
nose nose- fatted not-his-servant throttle
Variations of this sentence occurs on all three tablets (SEM 114, r8 and Tablet #36, r8).
On Tablet #36 the phrase is written kiri3 kiri3, “nose to nose,” but in the above sentence
it is written kiri3 kiri3-ni, where ni is the suffix for “his,” meaning “nose to his nose.” This would be the normal way to translate the phrase. However, ni is completely unnecessary because both noses are “his nose,” as it were, since two men are fighting. In this sentence, NI is actually mu5, meaning “good, beautiful, pleasing, plump, and rarely, “fatted.” The scribe had to get “fatted” in there somewhere. After all, this is the story of the Great Fatted Donkey. But the scribe uses the lesser known definition of NI (mu5) to get the message across, rather than the usual niga (fatted), which would be too obvious.
o9 e-ne-eĝ3 (ES, inim) gaba!-ri ka-{ba}-ab ze2-eĝ3 ze2-eĝ3 (ES, šum2, twice)
oath adversary mouth opened give (plural)
gaba-ri, "enemy," as written on this tablet and on Tablet #36.
This line appears word-for-word on Tablet #36, but on BE 31,28 it has a slight difference.
There is a small vertical mark added to gaba. It’s a very minor difference, but it’s enough to change the definition of the sign. With the added mark, gaba becomes isin, meaning “stalk.” Stalk doesn’t make any sense in the sentence, making it confusing for the reader. It also “hides” the enemy (gaba-ri). In a way, the enemy disappears completely behind that one
single stalk. Now there’s no enemy in the sentence, only a stalk, so the reader would not guess that la2 in the previous sentence actually means “to throttle.” In a normal sentence,
la2 has a dozen other meanings that would make more sense in the context of a stalk
(“small, light, hold, carry,” to name just a few). So, without an enemy in this sentence,
it’s unlikely that anyone would correctly guess the meaning of “throttle” for the sign la2. Fortunately, I was able to easily read the above sentence because it is written correctly
on Tablet #36. Otherwise it would have been a struggle to decipher this sentence if I was reading it for the first time.
Without an enemy in this sentence, there is no conflict. Without a conflict, the overall context of the tablet becomes difficult to discern, making it harder to translate the tablet. When I was trying to translate Tablet #36, a big breakthrough occurred when I realized there was a
conflict in the story, so I was able to correctly interpret the signs by using this context.
On this tablet, the conflict is obscured by the simple addition of one little mark.
It's not like the scribe didn't know any better. He wrote the same sign (du8) correctly at the end of line o14.
o10 munu4 šu4 gu7 ĝeš-ur3 ne ? maḫX gu7#- ka be6!
malt all fodder abandon this great [food- mouth (eating)] to diminish]
I drove myself crazy looking for a sign that looked like the first one in this sentence. Then I realized it is really just two signs joined together. The first sign is actually a simplified version of munu4, "malt," as shown on CDLI P392795. The second sign is U (šu4, "totality, all").
It seems I would have learned my lesson the first time, as explained in line o4 above.
o11 nir-nu- mu uĝ3 gi {d}en-lil2-a suhuš nu- mu mar
lordly-not-he people judgment Enlil support not-he place
o12 dam a-ni henburX tar gemeX-ni# gemeX zi2 li- ne henburX tuku
wife his grain-his decide servant-her slave cut twig this(one) grain-his get
There are two trick signs in this sentence, henburX and gemeX. They both occur twice.
See Sumerian Trick Signs.
o13 ta-a-aš šag4 ba/zu! mahX lugud2
why? what reason? stomach know great reduction
zu, as it appears in line r2
zu!: A variation of this sentence occurs on Tablet #36. It is written šag4 zu mahX lugud2,
“his stomach knows a great reduction,” meaning "a great hunger." In the above sentence,
zu seems to be written as ba, but it is actually zu. The scribe uses a very simplified version
of zu in line r2, with only one interior vertical line, as shown on the above left. The scribe omits the vertical line for the sign in the above sentence so that it looks like ba.
As explained in o9, the scribe adds a mark to gaba so that it looks like isin. Now the scribe omits a line on zu so that it looks like ba. The scribe does this several times on the tablet. That's why many signs in the line-drawing are denoted with a "!", meaning "written wrong."
Of course they could all be scribal errors, but I believe they're done deliberately to obscure
the meaning of the text. Sometimes the scribe adds a mark, (gaba o9, dim2 o20, and še r9). Sometimes he omits a mark (zu o13 and zuh r6). They are all signs that are written correctly elsewhere on the tablet.
It's just a little something something here and there to keep the reader off balance.
The scribe of Tablet #36 does something similar. On four out of five occurrences of gu4 (bull), the sign is missing the vertical mark.
o14 geštin si mu sur-sur henburX a-ni ir gar gemeX-la du8-du8
wine fill he squeezes henbur his plunder pile slave-happy spread
o15 mu-lu lu2 du a- ak i bar mu ĝen lum ma mu ukur3 dim2!
PN person go to- act defeat outside he walk manure he pauper made
o16 nunusX-a! lu nu- kal- la nunusX nu-zid na
woman-in abundance not-powerful no-woman no- virtue man
NunusX is the trick sign of this tablet. It is best explained with pictures on a separate page,
see Nu-nus.
The sign a! is explained below in line o20b.
o17 u4-da-am3 mu-lu ab-ba ba-an-tu dal/dirig en
storm-like PN father PN fly/supreme lord
RI = dal/dirig = fly/supreme.
Dal is a verb meaning “to fly.” If used as such, the verb is awkwardly placed in the sentence, almost at the end of the line with just one sign dangling after it. Another interpretation is that the sign is a seldom-used alternative definition for dirig, an adjective meaning “supreme.”
In this case it would apply to en (lord), meaning “supreme lord.” But if it’s used this way,
then the sentence is lacking a verb.
I doubt that it’s a scribal error, that the scribe simply forgot to add the verb. I believe the sentence was deliberately written this way to make it difficult to read. I also think the scribe fully intended for the sign to do “double duty” as both a verb and an adjective, so that’s
the way I used it: “Like a storm Mulu flies to his father Bantu, the supreme lord.”
In Sumerian, if a syllable begins with the same letter that the previous syllable ended with, then the syllables merge together. Thus, Ba-an-tu becomes Ban-tu.
o18 šag4-kug bad i-bi2 (ES, igi) za sa a na
heart-pure open behold bead jewelry of stone
o19 bi sam2 sam2 aĝ2-(ES, niĝ2)-ne pisan gu7- gu7
these barter thing-this basket food
As per the Sumerian Lexicon, page 228, sam2 (sa10) means, “n., equivalent; (barter) purchase; sale price; merchandise (Akk. loanword from šīmu(m) I, ‘to buy, purchase;
goods for commerce” and “v., to barter, exchange.”
o20a i-bi2 (ES, igi) mahX! ba dim2 mahX- mahX dim2
behold great gift make splendid magnificent to fashion
Ba usually means "give" (verb). Here it means "gift" (noun).
o20b ta-nu kar! bi
from-not marketplace these
a nunusX nunusX-a ! kar ! kar (te-a)
In o16, nunusX-a is written with the sign a compressed between nunusX and lu, as if it
had originally been omitted and then squeezed in afterwards (as shown in the third sign
from the left, denoted by the ! ). As a result, the sign a looks like three vertical strokes.
These same vertical strokes appear after the sign kar! (te-a), even though there is plenty
of room to draw the sign a correctly. I don't know if was carelessness on the part of the scribe or if it was done to obscure the meaning of the sign kar.
Mulu. Or is it Zuzu?
Reverse:
r1 dam šag4-egir2 nu- mes- ba za-e umuš [...]
wife heart-princess not-hero-give you plan
r2 gemeX-gin zu! am3 ta [lal]
maidservant- trust inform that character [lack]
Lal/la2, “lack, deficiency.” The end of this sentence is damaged, but the corresponding line on SEM 114 (r5) shows lal at the end of the line, meaning “a lack of character.”
r3 1{diš}-ta še-am3 ad pad3 ne [en na ba]
one-each sale price bead reveal this [lord stone give]
En na ba. These signs occur at the end of r6 on tablet SEM 114. It translates as “the lord
gave you these stones (beads).”
Sam2/še-am3: The sign sam2 is composed of the sign ninda, which forms the outer shell, and the internal signs of še-am3, as shown below. In the above sentence, only the signs
še-am3 appear. Perhaps the scribe omitted the ninda portion of the sign, intentionally or not. On the other hand, the corresponding line on SEM 114 reads "še 1{diš} sila3," which translates as "grain 1 unit" (še is the sign for grain) as the selling price for each bead. So perhaps the above line should read "1 each [unit of] grain" for each bead. Take your pick.
r4 bi sam2-sam2 aĝ2-(ES, niĝ2)-ne pisan-sur3# [x,...]
these purchase thing-this basket-half
At the end of the corresponding line on SEM 114 (r7) there appears to be a damaged and compressed version of šaḫ2, meaning “pig,” which leads me to believe that the half basket contains “pig slop.” Mulu "eats his food like a pig" and so does Lu-mah on Tablet #36.
r5 u3 za-e zu- nu nunusX e-ne-[eĝ3#? (ES, inim)] [...]
and you know- not woman ...
I translated this line as, "You don't know women," but with the trick meaning of the sign
nu-nus, this line could easily be translated as, "You don't know beads." Both translations fit perfectly in the context of the story, and I believe both versions are the intended meanings
of the signs. That is why I used both versions in the translation..
r6 lu2-zuh!- ir- ra nu-nus munus-kin du3 [...]
man-rob-plunder- to/for woman prostitute all
Gu3/zuh/saĝ: This phrase occurs in line r2 of Tablet #36, except it is written as lu2 gu3 ir, “man who cries out (bellows) for plunder.” In the above sentence, it is clearly written as
lu2 saĝ ir. It is also written this way on r10 of SEM 114. With saĝ it could be translated as “he who is a person who plunders,” which is awkward sounding. So I translated it as zuh, which means “to steal,” i.e., “man who robs and plunders,” because it sounds better and it does not change the meaning of the sentence. The sign was probably miswritten to obscure the meaning of the sentence. KA (gu3,zuh) and saĝ are essentially the same sign, except ka
has a few more interior marks. As mentioned before, the scribe adds or omits marks on a sign to keep the reader off balance.
Munus-kin: Munus means “woman,” kin means “work.” I suggest munus-kin means “prostitute.” This is described in detail on a separate page. See Munus-kin on this website
r7 e-ne-eĝ3 (ES, inim) pisan#? gu7-gu7 sag du [x, ...]
decree basket food person go
r8 aĝ2 (ES, niĝ2) pap zu2-zu2 gu3 anše- la- bala [x, ...]
possessions elder brother PN bray donkey- happy- replacement
r9 e-ne ze2-eĝ3 (ES, šum2, twice) mu-lu gana2-še!-lu zu2-zu2
she gives PN field-grain-abundant PN
Še/mu: In the line-drawing, this sign is clearly written as mu: “Mulu gana2 Mulu Zuzu,”
which suggests that the princess wife is giving Mulu’s fields to both Mulu and Zuzu.
I find this to be highly unlikely. There’s no way that the wife is giving Mulu half of his fields;
she barely wants to give him a half basket of pig slop. Plus, it doesn’t make sense that the
wife is giving back to Mulu what he already owned, which she has already taken from him.
Besides, this would shortchange Zuzu, who is her co-conspirator, and who clearly expects
to get all of the fields. On the other hand, if you ignore the horizontal line in mu, the sign
looks like ŝe (grain), so the sentence would read Mulu gana2- ŝe-lu Zuzu, which translates
as “Mulu’s abundant fields of grain” that are given to Zuzu. This makes sense because Zuzu
is being given Mulu’s fields as a reward for his part in the conspiracy. It is written this way
to obscure the meaning of the sentence, just like all the other instances where the scribe
slightly alters the signs with the addition of a single mark.
r10 libir za-e lu2 mah#? lu me en
live long you person great abundant to be lord
Mah, "great": This damaged sign may be a compressed version of mah, but I'm not
too sure about it. In the meantime, it is simply a "place saver" until I figure out a different interpretation of the sign, if indeed there is one.
r11 a-gug2 a-gug2 gug2-a egir2 mur hur hur ?
of-cake of-cake cake-of princess fodder forever ever again
The use of three identical signs in a row (with different meanings) occurs three times on
Tablet #36. They also occur three times on this tablet, twice in this sentence alone, and once
in r8. They are intended to make the tablet difficult to read. This is the only instance where three signs in a row mean three different things (instead of just two, like other examples).
Mur means "fodder," hur means "forever" and "ever again." The "ever again" adds a nice
twist to the end of the story, suggesting the events have happened before, and they will
happen again, ever again, for all of eternity. It is very clever.
lower margin
te? 4{diš} ?
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