Sumerian Shakespeare
Englund's List of Errors on Tablet #36
On this page, I describe the numerous errors made by Robert Englund in his ATF (ASCII Transliteration Format) for Tablet #36, the story of The Great Fatted Bull. The ATF originally appeared on the CDLI (the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative). Mr. Englund was the director
of the CDLI.
Bear in mind that I have 362 signs in a row that tell a complex yet highly cohesive story of
The Great Fatted Bull (see the Transliteration). I also have a complete Sign List for every sign
on Tablet #36. Englund, on the other hand, did not translate a single sign of this tablet.
In his ATF, Englund misidentified 41 signs and he arbitrary changed the sign names of
13 others, thereby changing their definitions. In so doing, he rendered Tablet #36 completely unintelligible.
Although I say Englund made “numerous errors” and he “misread the signs,” I believe it was
a deliberate effort to discredit my transliteration without disproving it. See the page about
The Great Fatted Bull and the CDLI.
Here is a list of Robert Englund’s “errors” in his ATF. Misread signs are highlighted in red.
The definitions he changed are highlighted in gray.
Robert Englund’s ATF Error List.
Note: Englund uses the CDLI convention of writing “sz” for “š.”
On Tablet #36, the scribe used a few “trick signs” to disguise the meaning of the story.
That’s because the tablet is actually a political satire (the first in world history). It ridicules
great lords and kings, which was a dangerous thing to do. The scribe used the trick signs
to obscure the meaning of the story, making it difficult (but not impossible) to read the tablet.
Mr. Englund did not acknowledge the trick signs because he said he was “no specialist in
literary or secret lore inscriptions.” I do not fault him for this. On the Error List shown above,
the trick signs are not highlighted because they look like normal signs but they have secret meanings (see Sumerian Trick Signs).
On this page I will only discuss the normal “standard-issue” signs that Englund misidentified.
Some of the errors Englund made are subtle, some of them are not so subtle.
Misread signs
Obverse (front of the tablet)
Beginning with line o5:
kal kal (line o5) kal (line r1) e
Englund misidentified kal as e, (kal has a vertical line on the left, whereas e does not).
Englund properly identified kal in line r1.
Englund did this several times on his ATF: He would correctly identify a sign on one line,
and then get it wrong on another line.
dib2 dur2
Because dib2 and dur2 are so similar, the scribes usually wrote them the same way.
The sign that is used depends on which definition fits into the context of the sentence.
Dib2 means “to send,” so my sentence translates as “… the workmen send.” Dur2 means “buttocks/sit/fart,” so Englund’s sentence translates as “… the workmen sit/fart." Seriously?
Englund made 5 mistakes (!) in line o6.
de6 ba de6 ba {d} Suen
Englund identified de6 ba as {d} Suen, the name of a god. It cannot be a typo. He did not mistakenly type “{d} Suen” when he meant to type “de6 ba.” This demonstrates Englund’s recklessness in reading the signs.
sza3-gal sza3-gal sza3-pi be6 (pi) line r10
Englund misidentified gal as pi, even though the signs are not very similar, yet he correctly identified the sign as be6 (an alternate name for pi) at the end of line r10.
nin u3
This sign is listed as u3 in Englund’s ATF, even though it lacks the reverse cunei on the left
and the internal vertical line. On the other hand, nin is often written this way, as illustrated below:
nin
?? nu nu
Englund identifies this sign as nu, but the sign is too badly damaged to be read. It is actually part of a chunk that is missing from the tablet, obliterating most of the sign (see a photograph of the damage). Besides, the scribe writes nu a different way.
dib2 dib2 ba
This sign is listed as ba, but the vertical line on the left makes it dib2.
A different kind of bull:
gu4 (bull) normal and compressed am (wild bull) normal and compressed
Englund called this sign am. This tablet is about a fatted bull, not a wild bull. There is a
big difference between a lean wild bull and a fatted domestic bull. There was absolutely
no reason for Englund to arbitrarily change this sign, except to discredit the context of
The Great Fatted Bull in the story.
in
henbur2 (grain) henburX
The ATF has all three occurrences of this sign listed as in, but in has two vertical lines,
whereas henbur2 has only one. The cluster of reverse cunei is not the same as sze (grain),
but the scribe uses eight different versions of sze, in signs like zid, li, ku4, gal-niga, etc.
Henbur2 fits perfectly into the context of all three sentences, but in does not. This is a
“trick sign.” I call it henburX. The scribe of The Princess Wife also uses henburX. However,
even if Englund didn’t accept trick signs, he was still wrong to identify this sign as in.
It is not in, neither by appearance nor definition.
Line o10
ni2 ni2 ni2 im
Englund listed this sign as im, but it has the two vertical lines that identify it as ni2. Englund also erroneously called it im in the previous line (o9), although he properly labeled it as ni2
in line r6 (!?).
Every Sumerologist in the world can read this sign, but Englund could not?
Line o11
ur ur2 bi iri
Englund identified the sign on the right as ur. I'm assuming he meant ur2. On Tablet #36,
this is actually two signs written right next to each other, bi and iri, as shown below:
bi iri
aszte2
Englund misidentified the sign aszte2 as si in line o13...
… but he properly identified si in line o8 (!?).
Line o15
a a za
Englund misidentified a as za. Even the simplest signs were misread by Englund.
More misread signs
Reverse (back of the tablet)
Englund made 3 mistakes in line r1.
ki (damaged) ki su su
The upper-left portion of the first sign is missing due to damage. I identified it as ki. Englund called it su. Ironically, later in the same sentence, he properly identified su (right), which has many vertical lines.
zu dab5 zu dab5 su ba
Ironically (again) in the same sentence Englund identified these signs as su-ba, but the sign
on the left has only one interior horizontal line, making it zu, and the other sign has a vertical
line on the left, making it dab5.
Englund also misidentified su in line r5.
Englund converts both occurrences of the sign ZI (zig3, zid) to gi. Although they look almost exactly alike, there is a slight difference in the way that the scribe writes the signs:
GI
For gi, the scribe writes the sign with some separation between the two lower strokes and the upper cluster.
ZI
For ZI, the lower strokes and the upper cluster are merged together.
It is a subtle difference, but Englund would have noticed the difference (like I did) if he had been more conscientious in doing his transliteration.
Line r5
utul2 utul2 utul2 eh
I identified this sign as utul2, “large bowl/tureen.” Englund called it eh, “insect.” Needless
to say, there are no insects in this story.
esz2-la2-a esz2-la2-a e e e
Englund identified these signs as “e-x,” where x denotes a sign that is too damaged
to be read. As you can see, the signs are perfectly legible, and e doesn’t look like esz2.
Line r6 of Englund’s ATF contains 3 misread signs.
mur10 mur10 ki
The ATF labeled mur10 as ki.
szu szu tusz
The ATF identified szu as tusz, but tusz has only a single interior line and it has a vertical line on the left.
ab ab ab nigin
Englund’s ATF misidentified ab as nigin. Ab has only one vertical line, nigin has four.
Line r7
al al al ib2
This damaged sign is al, but Englund labeled it as ib2, even though ib2 has two horizontal angles and it doesn’t have the vertical line on the right.
Line r8
ur ur ib
This damaged sign is ur. There is no hint of the multiple vertical lines that are contained in ib. The story of The Princess Wife also has a version of this sentence (line o8b), as does The
Great Fatted Jackass (line r8), and they both use the ur sign.
ka ka
This sign is labeled sag because it appears to have only a single mark in the head of the sign, but it also has a small reverse cunei that shows up in the line-drawing and on the tablet, which makes it ka.
Line r11
nir nir nir un
The ATF has this sign labeled as un (right). Notice that the two horizontal lines of nir
go the entire length of the sign, but not on un. Englund also labeled nir as un in the
same line.
Line r11
? asz niga ge
The ATF called this sign ge, even though it doesn't have the two vertical lines. It is actually
two signs written together -- asz and niga.
Line r15
iku/gana2
The ATF identifies these three signs as sa sa sa because they seem to lack the bold lines
on the right (like iku/gana2). As shown above, the bold lines can be seen on the tablet
but not in the drawing.
Sa has no applicable meaning in the sentence.
Line r15
usar usar numun2
Englund misidentified usar as numun2.
Even when Englund agreed that I had read a sign correctly, he still tried to damage my translation by assigning a different meaning to the sign.
Altered sign names:
As previously mentioned, the red highlight denotes a misread sign and the grey highlight
denotes a sign name (pronunciation) that Englund changed to alter its meaning.
All Sumerian signs have multiple definitions. The definition of a sign depends on how it is pronounced:
ka = mouth kiri = nose inim = word kir = hyena zuh = steal
This is the same sign, with different meanings and pronunciations.
When transliterating Tablet #36, I carefully chose the sign name that fit into the translation
of a sentence. Englund arbitrarily substituted an alternate sign name, making the sentence incoherent. He did this 13 different times. If he did it because he thought my sign name
didn’t properly fit into my translation, that would be okay. If he did it because he thought
the sign name didn’t fit into his own translation, that would also be okay. However,
Englund did not translate a single sentence of this tablet, so he had no reason to arbitrarily
change any of the sign names.
Misreading some of the signs and changing the meaning of others weren’t the only methods
that Englund used to damage my transliteration. There were two other ways.
Altered word strings
Sumerian transliterations have many dashes ( - ) between the sign names. The dashes
may mean two or more signs are part of the same word. For instance, nam-lugal means
“kingship.” Without the dash, it is two separate words, nam (fate) and lugal (king).
Dashes are also used to attach grammatical prefixes and suffixes to a sign to clarify
its meaning. In addition, dashes are used to associate certain “word strings.” For example,
na-la-ba-ni-ur means “man-not-his-servant,” meaning “rebel or enemy.”
Deciding where to put the dashes (and where not to put them) can be a tricky business.
I tried to be conscientious about the placement of the dashes to maintain the proper word separation, but Englund placed them haphazardly in the text, as shown below:
In Englund’s ATF, this entire sentence becomes just two “word strings.”
This sentence perfectly illustrates the accumulative effects on Englund’s mis-transliteration.
I transliterated the sentence as kiri3 kiri3 na-la-ba-ni-ur# la2-la2-e en#. It translates as
“Nose to nose, the lord and the ‘man-not-his-servant’ (enemy) throttle each other” (see
line r8 of the Transliteration). As previously stated, versions of this sentence also occur in
The Princess Wife and The Great Fatted Jackass. In Englund’s rendition, “nose” is converted to “mouth” − “mouth-mouth-man,” to be precise, which is meaningless. Englund also misread ur
as ib, so the enemy disappears, and the rest of this very long word string is rendered totally incomprehensible.
The coup de grâce
After Englund had finished his hatchet job on my transliteration, he noticed that it still
showed some signs of life, so he decided to take another whack at it.
He went straight for the Great Fatted Bull.
Just seven minutes after completing his ATF, Englund modified it with a second version,
in which he only changed a few signs (the first version was created at 4:58pm and the
second version was created at 5:05pm).
Line o5
gal-niga = great fatted
It is obvious that these signs are gal-niga, but Englund labeled them both as gi4, which is meaningless within the context of the sentence.
Gi4 is a modification of the sign gi.
gal-niga gi4 gi gi4 gi
Notice that gi4 is distinguishable from gal-niga because it has two vertical lines instead of
just one. Very late in the Old Babylonian period, when the signs became so simplified
as to be almost unrecognizable, the scribes sometimes wrote gi4 with just one vertical line.
They could do this because within the context of a given sentence the reader was unlikely
to confuse gal-niga (“great fatted”) with gi4 (“to turn, return; to go around”).
However, Tablet #36 was written much earlier in the Old Babylonian period, when the signs
were not so simplified. Besides, the scribe of Tablet #36 clearly writes gi with two vertical lines.
gal-niga twice in line o5
gi4 gi gi
So, if gal-niga was indeed gi4, it would have the exact same cluster on the right,
and it would have two vertical lines on the left, not just one.
(I couldn't provide any examples of gi4 because it is not written once on this tablet.)
Tablet #36 is titled The Great Fatted Bull, but Englund intended to discredit this story
right from the get-go. That is why he changed the fatted bull into a wild bull in line o8,
for no apparent reason.
Then, in creating a new version of the ATF with the sole purpose of eliminating gal-niga
("great fatted"), Robert Englund believed he had completely destroyed the context of
The Great Fatted Bull − once and for all. This was the coup de grâce.
Or so he thought.
"Really? You really thought you could get away with that?"
February 26, 2021
