# UD.GAL.NUN orthography · Concept

> A spelling system in Early Dynastic Sumerian literary tablets that replaces common signs by others according to rules, named after three of the…

Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DEDZ5HH5Q47/ud-gal-nun-orthography  
Publisher: Mysteries Department  
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (credit Mysteries Department and link the page)  

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[Concepts](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts)UD.GAL.NUN orthography

Concept · Assyriology · in 1 mystery

# UD.GAL.NUN orthography

A spelling system in Early Dynastic Sumerian literary tablets that replaces common signs by others according to rules, named after three of the substitutions.

[Unread cuneiform: half a million tablets and the limits of Sumerian](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/unread-cuneiform)[3 sources]

UD.GAL.NUN is the name given to the way some Sumerian literary tablets of about 2600 BC from Fara and Abu Salabikh are spelt. In these texts the sign UD is written where ordinary Sumerian writes AN (the sign for "god" and the divine determinative), GAL where it writes EN ("lord"), NUN where it writes LIL, and so on through a longer list; the three signs together spell what in normal orthography would be AN.EN.LIL, the god Enlil, which is how the system got its name [@krecher1978udgalnun]. Joachim Krecher recognised the pattern in 1978, after decades in which the tablets had been published but treated as unintelligible. Undoing the substitutions turns the texts back into Sumerian, but two further habits of Early Dynastic writing remain: the grammatical endings, postpositions and verbal prefixes are mostly left out, and the signs within a line are not always written in the order they were spoken [@krebernik2020zame]. For this site the concept matters because it marks the one body of cuneiform that is deciphered at the level of the script and still largely unread at the level of the text. Whether the system is a scribal code, a record of a different pronunciation (an early Emesal, as Alster asked in 1982), or something else, is not settled [@alster1982emesal].

## Where it comes up

**[Unread cuneiform: half a million tablets and the limits of Sumerian](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/unread-cuneiform)**

UD.GAL.NUN is a learned orthography, a regular table of sign substitutions that can in principle be fully recovered, after which the texts read as ordinary Sumerian.

[Q: Why do the Early Dynastic literary texts from Fara and Abu Salabikh resist reading, and can they be read without later duplicates?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/unread-cuneiform/questions/QST0DEDT3AM4NHK/why-do-the-early-dynastic-literary-texts-from-fara-and-abu)[UD.GAL.NUN is a recoverable orthography](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/unread-cuneiform/answers/ANS0DEDWTEHR4KW/ud-gal-nun-is-a-recoverable-orthography)[UD.GAL.NUN hides an early Emesal](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/unread-cuneiform/answers/ANS0DEDWV6KQY5W/ud-gal-nun-hides-an-early-emesal)[Cooper judges the UD.GAL.NUN compositions very hard to understand and thinks they left the curriculum before Ur III…](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/unread-cuneiform/evidence/EVD0DEDYSNXZZ9Q/cooper-judges-the-ud-gal-nun-compositions-very-hard-to)

## Sources 3

[The Sumerian Zame Hymns from Tell Abū Ṣalābīḫ, with an appendix on the Early Dynastic colophons](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDJ5N9KSRA/the-sumerian-zame-hymns-from-tell-abu-salabih-with-an)

SRC

[Emesal in Early Dynastic Sumerian? What is the UD.GAL.NUN-Orthography?](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDJ7JQW301/emesal-in-early-dynastic-sumerian-what-is-the-ud-gal-nun)

SRC

[Sumerische Literatur der Fara-Zeit: Die UD.GAL.NUN-Texte (I)](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDJ8E54H39/sumerische-literatur-der-fara-zeit-die-ud-gal-nun-texte-i)

SRC

## Cite it

```
Mysteries Department. (2026). UD.GAL.NUN orthography [Concept CPT0DEDZ5HH5Q47]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/CPT0DEDZ5HH5Q47
```

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**CPT** 0DEDZ5HH5Q47

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Concept

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Related

[Decipherment](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECW01ZWFP5/decipherment) · [Logographic script](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECW02H879M/logographic-script)

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Related concepts

[Decipherment](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECW01ZWFP5/decipherment)[Logographic script](https://mysteriesdept.com/concepts/CPT0DECW02H879M/logographic-script)

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