Evidence · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

Archaic names outside the worker lists, including under title headers, also lack the Sumerian name profile

Archaic names that are not listed under a human-category header show the same weak element signal as the worker names: 269 names under other headers give an odds ratio of 1.27 (95% 0.93–1.65), and 61 under headers with a title sign (SANGA, EN, PA, GAL and others) give 1.38 (0.60–2.34), against 1.40 for worker names and 4.5–5.8 for Early Dynastic Sumerian names.

Suggestive0

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 foreign-workforce escape finds no support in the names available: no group of archaic names, by context, approaches the Sumerian profile. Two readings remain: non-Sumerian name-givers, or name entries that are labels rather than spelled names.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?Set by this evidence

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

Archaic names split by context: workers, other headers, title headers

Method Name-element enrichment against a corpus baseline · Session 5

Result. No context group approaches the Sumerian range. The upper 95% bounds are 1.65–2.34 for the groups of useful size, against 4.5 and up for Sumerian names. The foreign-workforce explanation finds no support among the names available, but the groups come from the same personnel tablets and do not include a clean sample of officials..

Element odds ratio (Englund's list without EN) per context group, with a tablet-cluster bootstrap; compared with the Early Dynastic benchmark{'OTHERS': {'n': 269, 'or_95': [0.93, 1.65], 'odds_ratio': 1.27}, 'TITLED': {'n': 61, 'or_95': [0.6, 2.34], 'odds_ratio': 1.38}, 'WORKERS': {'n': 245, 'or_95': [0.88, 1.77], 'odds_ratio': 1.4}, 'NO_HEADER': {'n': 26, 'or_95': [0.52, 3.62], 'odds_ratio': 1.93}, 'ED_dependents': 4.72, 'ED_benchmark_range': [4.47, 5.84]}No context group approaches the Sumerian range. The upper 95% bounds are 1.65–2.34 for the groups of useful size, against 4.5 and up for Sumerian names. The foreign-workforce explanation finds no support among the names available, but the groups come from the same personnel tablets and do not include a clean sample of officials.

Figure 1

No group of archaic names, whatever list it sits in, comes near the Sumerian name profile

Odds ratio of Englund's Sumerian name elements (without EN) in names against other words, 95% bootstrap intervals; CDLI Uruk III and Oracc ePSD2 ED IIIb

odds ratio95% low95% high

Groups fixed before scoring by the header each name sits under. The archaic groups overlap in archive, mostly Schøyen personnel tablets.

Drawn by the site with Archaic names split by context

Archaic personal names in proto-cuneiform (editor-marked, CDLI)Nino-cunei/uruk: the Uruk IV-III corpus in Text-Fabric officials_split.py names_test.py 1 output

Sources 3

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

Kelley 2018

SRC

Texts from the Late Uruk Period

Englund 1998

SRC

The Smell of the Cage

Englund 2009

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). Archaic names outside the worker lists, including under title headers, also lack the Sumerian name profile [Evidence EVD0DG2EPACMYJ4]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2EPACMYJ4

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dg2epacmyj4,
  title     = {Archaic names outside the worker lists, including under title headers, also lack the Sumerian name profile},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DG2EPACMYJ4},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2EPACMYJ4}
}