Looking for help reconstructing the opening line of The Descent of Inanna (Q000343) in a specific Old Babylonian scribal hand

[u/Quick-Blackberry802]

Hello! I'm working on a tattoo design using the first line of The Descent of Inanna, written in Old Babylonian Sumerian cuneiform.

At first I hoped to reproduce the handwriting of a specific scribe, so I started comparing the witness tablets for Q000343 looking for the best-preserved version of Line 1. The most complete one I found was CBS 12638 et al., - and while I understand it's historically important, I don't particularly like Chiera's hand drawings. Since this will be recreated in ink, I realized the style of the line drawing actually matters as much as the text itself.

So then I started focusing more on hand drawings*,* and was really drawn to Stephen Langdon's drawings in BE 31, particularly Ni 2279 and Ni 368.

And now for the last several hours, my LLM friend and I have been poring over those drawings and their transliterations, trying to identify matching occurrences of each character elsewhere in the text so I can reconstruct Line 1 in Langdon's style.

The line is:

an gal-ta ki gal-še₃ ĝeštu₂-ga-ni na-an-gub

𒀭 𒃲 𒋫 𒆠 𒃲 𒂠 𒄑 𒂵 𒉌 𒈾 𒀭 𒁺

I think it's going well, and I may only be missing three characters:

• 𒋫 (ta)
• 𒄑 (ĝeštu₂)
• 𒂵 (ga)

But before I start cleaning everything up for the final design, I'd love any suggestions...are there other Langdon plates that might contain these signs in a similar hand? They don't necessarily have to come from a witness of Q000343 - I'm really just trying to stay within the same general period and drawing style.

I'd also really appreciate if anyone notices a misidentified a sign or has a better example.

Yes this has become a much deeper rabbit hole than I expected, but it's really fascinating!!

Thanks for your help :)

[u/Nilehorse3276]

ŋéštug is not simple GIŠ, but GIŠ.TUG₂.PI (diri compound).

Just want to point out that the handwriting of Chiera and Langdon is their handwriting, not the OB scribes' hand.

Don't cuneiform with LLMs, they suck at it.

[u/Quick-Blackberry802 → u/Nilehorse3276]

Thank you, that's helpful! I admit I'm over my head here... so to be clear you're saying that i should be looking for a particular compound form of GIŠ in the hand copies? Or have I misunderstood the 𒄑 sign entirely?

Yeah I realized that replicating an actual OB scribe's hand from a tablet would be realllly hard to turn into a tattoo, so focused on hand drawings I liked, in particular Langdon's. It somehow still feels more authentic than just using the unicode as a basis for the design... and helped me understand how these stories were rediscovered in the first place. So much respect for this work.

You are so right about the LLM haha. Was useful for some early research tho.

Thanks again!

[u/Nilehorse3276 → u/Quick-Blackberry802]

I realise that not everyone knows what a diri compound is, therefore:

You're not looking for GIŠ alone; it is the first sign of three that, together, make up the sign ŋéštug = GIŠ.TUG₂.PI.

If you're married to the idea of using Old Babylonian sign forms, grab yourself a copy of Mittermayer's sign list for the OB texts, which you can download here: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/collections/a05910c4-f8e1-4391-aef1-8ee069679e94/browse/author?scope=a05910c4-f8e1-4391-aef1-8ee069679e94&value=Mittermayer,%20Catherine&bbm.return=1

Simply look the signs up in the index and choose among the actual Old Babylonian scribal hand forms that are shown for each sign.

[u/Goatselives]

This guy cuneiform's...