Position in chronology
An elegy on the death of Nawirtum (Elegy 2)
Written in modern English
An evil day fell upon a young woman in her prime — a beautiful, well-favored girl. Something like a net closed over her, a fledgling that had barely left the nest. Her mother, a woman who had borne many children, was herself caught in a snare. Nawirtum — compared here to a fertile wild cow and to a gakkul vessel — never once said 'I am sick,' and so no one looked after her. Several lines follow, but the tablet is too damaged to read. What survives at the end places the scene in Nippur, the city shrouded in fog, before the surface breaks off entirely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSLAn evil day ...... upon the maiden in her ....... Upon the fair woman, the well-favoured maiden, the evil eye ....... Upon the fledgling overstepping its nest, a net has ....... The fecund mother, the mother of children, is ...... by a snare. The yellow cow, the fertile (?) wild cow, ...... like a gakkul vessel. Nawirtum, the fertile (?) wild cow, ...... like a gakkul vessel. She who never said "I am sick" was not cared for. She who did not ...... did not ...... the divine place. Like their resting-place, their hurled ...... was not ....... Nibru is covered in fog (?); in the city .......…
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — scholar edition (Oxford, Black/Cunningham/Robson/Zólyomi).
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Scholarly note
Composition c.5.5.3 in the ETCSL catalogue. Sumerian literary text reconstructed from multiple cuneiform manuscripts, the great majority Old Babylonian (c. 1900–1600 BCE). Translation reproduced from the ETCSL edition.
Attribution
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Translation excerpted from ETCSL c.5.5.3: An elegy on the death of Nawirtum (Elegy 2). Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E. & Zólyomi, G. (eds.), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.5.5.3.
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