Position in chronology
CDLI Literary 000343, ex. 056
About this tablet
A small Old Babylonian school tablet from Nippur carrying a few lines of 'Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld', one of the most famous Sumerian myths. This passage preserves Enki's instructions to the two creatures he fashioned to rescue the goddess: they must refuse the bribes offered in the underworld, demand the corpse hanging from a peg, and revive it with the plant and water of life. Dozens of such student copies survive, which is how scholars have pieced the whole poem together.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The readable lines are the rescue instructions from the myth of Inanna's descent: when the powers of the underworld try to buy you off with gifts — a river full of water, a field full of grain — refuse them, don't reach out your hand. Instead, demand the corpse hanging from the peg. Then one of you is to sprinkle the plant of life over it, and the other the water of life, to bring the goddess back from the dead. The first and last lines of the fragment are too damaged to read, and the rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, fragmentary) 1. [...] ... [...] 2. [When they] offer [(the river with its water)] to you, do not accept it! 3. [When they] offer [(the field with its grain)] to you, do not accept it! 4. "[Give us the corpse] hanging from the peg," say to her! 5. [One of you sprinkle the plant of] life, one [the water of life], over [her] ... 6. [...] ... [...] (remainder broken)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[...] x x x [...] [...]-ba# mu-un-na#-ba-e#-[...] szu# na#-mu-e-gid2-i-[...] [...] x mu-un-na#-ba-e-[...] szu# na-mu-e-gid2#-[i-...] [...] x kak#-ta la2 [...] du11#-ga-na-ab#-[...] [...]-ti#-la 1(disz)-am3# [...]-x bi2-in-[...] [...]-ba#-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC)) — CDLI Literary 000343, ex. 056. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: N 1054 (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P275002). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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