The archaic names fall far short of the Sumerian name profile that Early Dynastic names show
Against a benchmark of lemmatized Early Dynastic Sumerian names scored the same way (odds ratios 4.5–5.8, 40–53% of names with an element), the Uruk III names show only a marginal departure from chance (odds ratio 1.35, 12.4%), so the prediction that they would show Sumerian structure is not borne out.
What it means
- The names now count against a Sumerian reading, weighted by how far dependents' names reflect the scribes' language.For the key question: What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?
Next steps 14
Details
Compare how the archaic names reuse their elements (type-token curves, share of elements in two or more distinct names, compositional pairs) with Early Dynastic names at matched sample sizes; linguistic names, of any language, reuse a small vocabulary productively, while ad hoc labels should not.
Details
Englund argues that putting the numeral before the noun is un-Sumerian; Dahl notes that account formats may have their own order. In Early Dynastic administrative texts written in Sumerian (Fara and later, from CDLI or Oracc), measure how often the numeral precedes the counted noun. If Sumerian accounts also put it first, the syntax argument drops out and the Sumerian answer loses one objection; if they put it after, the archaic order stays as evidence for the unknown answer.
Details
Identify name-like entries attached to officials and institutions in Uruk III (heads of households, seal owners, officials in the Professions-list vocabulary) and score them against the Early Dynastic benchmark. Sumerian-pattern officials with non-Sumerian dependents point to a foreign workforce; non-Sumerian officials point to non-Sumerian scribes or a labelling notation.
Details
Test name-like entries attached to officials and institutions in Uruk III, to separate the scribes' own naming culture from the listed workers'.
Sources 3
Cite it
Mysteries Department. (2026). The archaic names fall far short of the Sumerian name profile that Early Dynastic names show [Evidence EVD0DFVQQAH0AHS]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DFVQQAH0AHS
@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dfvqqah0ahs,
title = {The archaic names fall far short of the Sumerian name profile that Early Dynastic names show},
author = {{Mysteries Department}},
year = {2026},
note = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DFVQQAH0AHS},
url = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DFVQQAH0AHS}
}