Evidence · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

The EN enrichment is confined to the unprovenanced archives and absent from the excavated ones

Counting EN as a Sumerian element (Englund's candidate for archaic lugal), 29.6% of 416 unprovenanced names (Schøyen, Brussels, private) contain an element against a null of 12.7–20.0%, but 16.1% of 124 names from excavated or museum archives (Ashmolean Jemdet Nasr, Iraq Museum, Berlin) do, against a null of 12.1–25.0%.

Suggestive0

What it means

Key questionWhat language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?

5 answers, none ahead yet

Openunchanged

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

5 answers, none ahead yet

Openunchanged

Answer this evidence bears onThe names favour Sumerian name elements

Counts against1 for, 3 against

Still possibleunchanged

What it implies

Name statistics pooled across archives can mislead: the Schøyen accounts dominate any name sample and may reflect one place or one administration.For: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?

Next steps 12

Screen continuity matches against archaic lexical spellings

Adds evidenceGood odds~2 h

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

20score

Details

Go through the 27 matched archaic-to-ED names. Drop any that depend on a spelling first attested after ED I-II, such as the EN.E2 spelling of Enlil, and rerun the null comparison. If the excess over the null holds, continuity stands.

Archive-level name profiles

Adds evidenceGood odds~3 h

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

19score

Details

Compare the full sign profiles of Schøyen/Brussels names and excavated Jemdet Nasr/Uruk names (shared vocabulary, Jensen-Shannon distance against a permutation null) to see whether they form two distinct naming populations.

Per-match chance calibration

Adds evidenceGood odds~3 h

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

19score

Details

For each matched name, estimate the probability of a chance match from the frequency of its signs in ordinary entries and in Early Dynastic names, and rank the matches by strength.

Rare-sign name bridge with an order constraint

Could shiftFair odds~3 h

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

19score

Details

Repeat the bridge only for archaic names that contain a sign occurring in under 1% of names, weighting each match by how unlikely it is under the shuffle null. A surplus there would point to real survivals; none would leave the names with no route to a reading.

Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takesAll 12 on the question

How it was found 1 run

Where the EN signal comes from: archive split and within-name position

Method Within-name position test against a shuffle · Session 2

Result. Exploratory, decided after the main run. The EN enrichment is confined to the unprovenanced group (mostly Schøyen, 'Umma?') and absent from the excavated archives, so it counts against a general Sumerian naming signal. EN is strongly name-initial in the editors' order, which is evidence for an en-X template only if collation confirms the order..

Element share by archive group against a resampling null; count of names with EN first against a within-name shuffle{'EN_first': {'p': '<0.0002', 'first': 54, 'names': 80, 'expected': 33.2, 'shuffle_95': [25, 42]}, 'PAP_first': {'first': 6, 'names': 27, 'shuffle_95': [7, 17]}, 'S_excavated': {'null_95': [0.056, 0.169], 'observed': 0.105}, 'S+EN_excavated': {'n': 124, 'null_95': [0.121, 0.25], 'observed': 0.161}, 'S_unprovenanced': {'null_95': [0.067, 0.123], 'observed': 0.13}, 'S+EN_unprovenanced': {'n': 416, 'null_95': [0.127, 0.2], 'observed': 0.296}}Exploratory, decided after the main run. The EN enrichment is confined to the unprovenanced group (mostly Schøyen, 'Umma?') and absent from the excavated archives, so it counts against a general Sumerian naming signal. EN is strongly name-initial in the editors' order, which is evidence for an en-X template only if collation confirms the order.

Figure 1

The EN-name excess sits in the unprovenanced Schøyen and Brussels accounts, not in excavated Jemdet Nasr and Uruk

Share of names containing Englund's elements plus EN, by archive group, against 5,000 resampled pseudo-names

namesnull 2.5th percentilenull 97.5th percentile

Excavated names fall inside the null range. Most unprovenanced names come from a few Schøyen tablets attributed to Umma with a question mark.

Drawn by the site with Where the EN signal comes from

Figure 2

EN is written first in two-thirds of the names that contain it; other common name signs are not fixed in place

Names of two or more signs: times each sign is transliterated first, against 5,000 within-name shuffles

observed firstexpectedshuffle 97.5th percentile

Order is the editors' transliteration order, which Born and Kelley show is partly conventional; collation against the tablet images is needed before this counts.

Drawn by the site with Where the EN signal comes from

Archaic personal names in proto-cuneiform (editor-marked, CDLI)names_followups.py names_test.py 1 output

Notes from the run

Transliteration order within a case is partly editorial (Born and Kelley 2021), so the position result is provisional until collated.

Sources 2

Gender, age, and labour organization in the earliest texts from Mesopotamia and Iran (c. 3300–2900 BC)

Kelley 2018

SRC

The Smell of the Cage

Englund 2009

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). The EN enrichment is confined to the unprovenanced archives and absent from the excavated ones [Evidence EVD0DFQST9NGVHJ]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DFQST9NGVHJ

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dfqst9ngvhj,
  title     = {The EN enrichment is confined to the unprovenanced archives and absent from the excavated ones},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DFQST9NGVHJ},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DFQST9NGVHJ}
}