Evidence · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

EN-name frequency differs between archives, not between single tablets

EN occurs in 0–7% of names on the excavated Jemdet Nasr tablets and 16–33% on most Schøyen and Brussels tablets; heterogeneity across all 41 tablets is modest (chi-square 51.2 on 40 df, p = 0.11; between-tablet SD of the rate 0.019), and removing the two largest contributors lowers the pooled rate only from 16.7% to 14.4%.

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 onNone of these.

Supports1 for, none against

Still possiblewas No evidence yet

What it implies

Name studies should be stratified by archive; pooling the Schøyen accounts with excavated Jemdet Nasr material mixes at least two naming populations.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?Set by this evidence

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

Per-tablet heterogeneity of EN in the archaic names

Method Name-element enrichment against a corpus baseline · Session 3

Result. The EN excess is spread across the unprovenanced Schøyen and Brussels tablets and absent from the excavated Jemdet Nasr ones. It is an archive-level difference, not the product of one or two tablets..

Pearson chi-square of EN-name counts against a common rate; method-of-moments between-tablet SD; leave-one-tablet-out rates{'p': 0.11, 'df': 40, 'chi2': 51.2, 'MS3035_rate': 0.238, 'pooled_rate': 0.167, 'MRAH_O4995_rate': 0.206, 'between_tablet_sd': 0.019, 'Ashm_1926-0566_rate': 0, 'rate_without_top2_tablets': 0.144}The EN excess is spread across the unprovenanced Schøyen and Brussels tablets and absent from the excavated Jemdet Nasr ones. It is an archive-level difference, not the product of one or two tablets.

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

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). EN-name frequency differs between archives, not between single tablets [Evidence EVD0DFVQBQ58B0S]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DFVQBQ58B0S

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dfvqbq58b0s,
  title     = {EN-name frequency differs between archives, not between single tablets},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DFVQBQ58B0S},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DFVQBQ58B0S}
}