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Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of UrukEvidence
Evidence · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

The same name is often transliterated in different sign orders, so the EN-first pattern is not a name template

Of 58 multi-sign names that recur in the corpus, 22 (38%) are transliterated in more than one sign order, including 5 of the 10 recurring names containing EN; across those recurring attestations EN stands first in 18 of 27, the same two-thirds as overall.

Supported0

What it means

Openunchanged
Openunchanged
Answer this evidence bears onThe names favour Sumerian name elements
Counts against1 for, 3 against
Still possibleunchanged
What it implies
  1. The EN-first result recorded in session 2 is explained by a tendency, not a template; it no longer counts toward a Sumerian en-X name type.For: Do the roughly 440 personal names in the archaic texts follow Sumerian, Semitic or some other naming pattern?
  2. Positional statistics on proto-cuneiform transliterations (case-initial, case-final) need an order-robust design before they can test language-boundness.For the key question: What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?

Next steps 12

1
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.

2
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.

3
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.

4
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

Result. Repeated names are not written in a fixed order, and half the repeated EN names occur in both orders. The EN-first tendency is not a name template, so session 2's speculative EN-first evidence is withdrawn as support. Image collation is not needed to reach this conclusion..
Share of recurring multi-sign names (same sign set, two or more attestations) transliterated in more than one order{'share': 0.379, 'EN_recurring': 10, 'recurring_names': 58, 'EN_recurring_mixed': 5, 'written_in_2plus_orders': 22, 'EN_first_in_recurring_attestations': '18 of 27'}Repeated names are not written in a fixed order, and half the repeated EN names occur in both orders. The EN-first tendency is not a name template, so session 2's speculative EN-first evidence is withdrawn as support. Image collation is not needed to reach this conclusion.
Archaic personal names in proto-cuneiform (editor-marked, CDLI)order_consistency.py1 output

Sources 1

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). The same name is often transliterated in different sign orders, so the EN-first pattern is not a name template [Evidence EVD0DFVQC4R1EM1]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DFVQC4R1EM1
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