Evidence · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

Matched on social class, Sumerian dependents' names still differ sharply from the Uruk III names

Early Dynastic IIIb dependent workers' names carry the stock Sumerian name elements at an odds ratio of 4.6–4.7, against 1.35 for the Uruk III dependents' names, so the gap between the archaic names and Sumerian names is not explained by the named people's status.

Supported0

What it means

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

5 answers, none ahead yet

Openunchanged

Answer this evidence bears onProto-cuneiform records Sumerian

Counts against3 for, 6 against

Still possibleunchanged

What it implies

The names evidence now weighs against a Sumerian reading, with the foreign-workforce possibility as the remaining escape.For the key question: What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?

Next steps 14

Labels or names: element reuse against Early Dynastic

Could shiftGood odds~4 h

On: What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?

40score

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.

Test the numeral-order argument on Sumerian accounts

Could shiftGood odds~6 h

On: What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?

34score

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.

Officials' names in Uruk III

Could decideFair odds~10 h

On: What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?

28score

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.

Officials' names

Could decideFair odds~10 h

On: What language, if any, do the proto-cuneiform texts record?

28score

Details

Test name-like entries attached to officials and institutions in Uruk III, to separate the scribes' own naming culture from the listed workers'.

Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takesAll 14 on the question

How it was found 1 run

Dependents-only Sumerian benchmark (ED IIIb ration lists)

Method Name-element enrichment against a corpus baseline · Session 4

Result. The gap survives matching on class. Early Dynastic dependents' names carry the Sumerian elements as strongly as the whole corpus or more, so H-NAMES-NOTSUMERIAN passes its dependents-only kill test. ED IIIa could not be tested because no ration lists are lemmatized in this form..

Token odds ratio of Englund's Sumerian name elements in dependent workers' names against the period's other words; share of names with at least one element against a length-matched null{'D2_strict': {'n': 5142, 'null': 0.217, 'or_95': [4.45, 4.77], 'share': 0.65, 'texts': 88, 'odds_ratio': 4.6}, 'ED_IIIb_all': {'n': 31083, 'or_95': [4.39, 4.55], 'share': 0.528, 'odds_ratio': 4.47}, 'D3_line_level': {'n': 35, 'null': 0.171, 'or_95': [1.57, 5.08], 'share': 0.429, 'texts': 22, 'odds_ratio': 3.25}, 'D1_ration_lists': {'n': 6894, 'null': 0.209, 'or_95': [4.57, 4.87], 'share': 0.603, 'texts': 99, 'odds_ratio': 4.72}, 'Uruk_III_archaic': {'n': 540, 'or_95': [1.09, 1.6], 'share': 0.124, 'odds_ratio': 1.35}}The gap survives matching on class. Early Dynastic dependents' names carry the Sumerian elements as strongly as the whole corpus or more, so H-NAMES-NOTSUMERIAN passes its dependents-only kill test. ED IIIa could not be tested because no ration lists are lemmatized in this form.

Figure 1

Sumerian dependent workers' names carry the stock name elements as strongly as anyone's; the Uruk III dependents' names do not

Odds ratio of Englund's Sumerian name elements in names against the corpus's other words, 95% bootstrap intervals; Oracc ePSD2 ED IIIb and CDLI Uruk III

odds ratio95% low95% high

Dependent definitions were fixed before scoring. ED IIIa has no lemmatized ration lists in this form.

Drawn by the site with Dependents-only Sumerian benchmark (ED IIIb ration lists)

Early Dynastic Sumerian personal names, lemmatized (Oracc ePSD2 admin corpora ED I–II, IIIa, IIIb)dep_benchmark.py ed_benchmark.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). Matched on social class, Sumerian dependents' names still differ sharply from the Uruk III names [Evidence EVD0DG2CQY8YJDD]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2CQY8YJDD

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dg2cqy8yjdd,
  title     = {Matched on social class, Sumerian dependents' names still differ sharply from the Uruk III names},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DG2CQY8YJDD},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2CQY8YJDD}
}