Position in chronology
A balbale to Inana and Dumuzid (Dumuzid-Inana E1)
Written in modern English
An unknown number of lines are missing at the start, and the next sixteen are too damaged to read clearly. What emerges is a young woman adorning herself with ornaments and a young man with his sword belt; the speaker asks that a girlfriend be brought to the place of the festival. Then a woman rides on a beast — the surface breaks up, but the words lion and great beast are still legible before more lines are lost. When the text becomes readable again, she is preparing herself: gathering something at her ears, blending kohl, letting her pinned-up hair fall loose, and bathing — rubbing herself with soap from a white bowl and rinsing with water, though the line breaks off there.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSLunknown no. of lines missing 16 lines fragmentary or unclear The young maiden ...... ornaments. The young man ...... sword belt. Let my girlfriend ...... to the place of the festival. She rides on a beast, ...... on a beast. ...... on a lion ....... ...... on a great beast ....... unknown no. of lines missing 1 line fragmentary ...... gathers ......, ...... on her ears. She blends (?), she blends (?) ........ She blends (?) kohl. She lets down her hair which was combed up. She bathes and rubs herself with soap. She rubs herself with soap from the white bowl, she bathes with water from the…
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — scholar edition (Oxford, Black/Cunningham/Robson/Zólyomi).
Scholarly note
Composition c.4.08.31 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.4.08.31: A balbale to Inana and Dumuzid (Dumuzid-Inana E1). 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.4.08.31.
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