Evidence · Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

The non-Sumerian name profile holds across every context the archaic names appear in

Split by the header they sit under (worker categories 245, other headers 269, title headers 61, no header 26), every group of archaic names has an element odds ratio between 1.27 and 1.93, and no group's 95% interval reaches the Early Dynastic Sumerian range of 4.5 or above.

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 onThe names lack the Sumerian name profile

Supports5 for, none against

Still possibleunchanged

What it implies

The lack of a Sumerian profile is a property of archaic name-writing generally, not of one list type.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?

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

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 1

The Smell of the Cage

Englund 2009

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). The non-Sumerian name profile holds across every context the archaic names appear in [Evidence EVD0DG2EVTYA5ZH]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2EVTYA5ZH

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dg2evtya5zh,
  title     = {The non-Sumerian name profile holds across every context the archaic names appear in},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DG2EVTYA5ZH},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DG2EVTYA5ZH}
}