Answer · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

A person

KU.ŠIM names one person, an official who handled barley and malt at Uruk.

Still possibleAnswers 1 question0

Where it stands

Still possibleOne piece of evidence for, none against. It needs two reviews to be accepted.

What it predicts

KU.šIM is absent from the archaic professions and officials lists.
Its tablets cluster in a single archive and time span.
It stands beside titles (SANGA) the way names do.

What would rule it out

KU.šIM appears as an entry in Lu2 A or the Officials list, or in unrelated archives across sites.

Evidence 1 for · none against

Kushim: confined to one archive, absent from the title lists, often written beside SANGA

Suggestive

FOR

Tested by 1 run

Run	Measured	Result	Against	Decision	Date
Run	share of a type's tablets in its largest publication volume / provenience	0.909	Names median 0.67–0.70 (n = 4), titles 0.50–0.67 (n = 6)	Undecided; the distribution features cannot separate names from titles in this corpus (too few recurrent marked names).

The questions it answers

Is KU.ŠIM ('Kushim') in the Uruk III barley accounts a person's name or an office?

Part of Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?

Open2 answers, none ahead

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). A person [Answer ANS0DG364FTTKN7]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ANS0DG364FTTKN7

@misc{mysteriesdept_ans0dg364fttkn7,
  title     = {A person},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Answer, catalog key ANS0DG364FTTKN7},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ANS0DG364FTTKN7}
}