Position in chronology
He is a good seed of a dog (Diatribe C)
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSLHe is a good seed of a dog, the offspring of a wolf! He is the stench of a mongoose, an unruly (?) hyena cub, a fox with a covering like a crab's, a monkey not pleasing to its homeland, its judgment confused. His face is disfigured, his judgment is muddled, his intelligence is ....... I would ...... with the dog (?), a smitten man who makes himself important. He is negligent, a cripple, the son of a hound. A madman, crazy, a man who ...... -- he is a pitfall, ...... evil words, denouncing ...... with an evil mouth and a forked tongue. ......, he lies on the bank of a river, allowing a ship's…
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — scholar edition (Oxford, Black/Cunningham/Robson/Zólyomi).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Scholarly note
Composition c.5.4.12 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
Image: .
Translation excerpted from ETCSL c.5.4.12: He is a good seed of a dog (Diatribe C). 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.5.4.12.
Related tablets
Related sources
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.