Newly Deciphered Cuneiform Tablet Contains Unknown Sumerian Myth

[Judi Lynn]

July 28, 2025



Hand copy of the cuneiform tablet

Jana Matuszak

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—A riveting lost Sumerian myth was recently rediscovered thanks to University of Chicago Sumerologist Jana Matuszak, Phys.org reports. She deciphered a forgotten cuneiform tablet that currently resides in the collection of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. Known as Ni 12501, the 4,400-year-old inscribed clay object was originally found during nineteenth-century excavations at the ancient city of Nippur in present-day southern Iraq, but was given little scholarly attention due to its fragmentary nature. The tablet was mentioned in a publication by esteemed Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer in the 1950s, though it was not fully studied until Matuszak’s recent research. The text conveys a tale of how the Sumerian storm god Ishkur was trapped in the netherworld, causing chaos on earth due to the lack of rain. Ishkur’s father Enlil, the king of the gods, summons a divine assembly and asks one of the gathered deities to retrieve Ishkur. No gods volunteer, but, surprisingly, a lone fox does. The fox slyly enters and maneuvers through the underworld on its journey, but the broken tablet unfortunately ends the narrative. Until other, more complete tablets are found that record the same myth, scholars may never know whether the fox successfully completed its mission. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Iraq.To read about another inscribed tablet from the ancient city, go to "Mapping the Past: Nippur Map Tablet."

More:
https://archaeology.org/news/2025/07/28/newly-deciphered-cuneiform-tablet-contains-unknown-sumerian-myth/

[eppur_se_muova]

1. At what point did cuneiform scribes say "Man, we gotta find a better way ! This stuff is a mess !" ? nt

[Hekate]

7. Ironically, the clay tablets survived where paper/papyrus cannot. While earthquakes shatter clay, fire hardens the clay

[eppur_se_muova]

11. True ! I understand most of those tablets were preserved due to accidental fires, not deliberately baking them.

I'm sure that's not true in every case. But scribes did soak older tablets in water to soften them up and re-use them.

For obvious reasons, I am reminded of this:

[Hekate]

13. Very funny!

[alittlelark]

2. Echoes of Persephone

[Hekate]

8. Echoes of Inanna, who went to the Underworld to see her sister Ereshkigal, who was queen there

Ereshkigal was full of wrath and grieving, and slew her with a look (also hung the body from a hook on the wall). Inanna was there 3 days and rose again full of love for mankind — no wait, that’s kind of another myth.

Inanna had left word with Ninshubur, a trusted friend, that if she didn’t return in 3 days, her friend was to seek help. One god after another refused, observing that Inanna had chosen to travel “the road from which no traveller returns.” Her own consort had assumed her throne and was kind of “meh” about getting her back. The god Enki, however, created 2 small beings to slip into the Underworld, revive Inanna, and lead her back. Where incidentally she looks for revenge on those who refused to help her.

You might enjoy Inanna: Queen of Heaven & Earth (Her Stories & Hymns from Sumer) by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer. It came out in 1983, and altho more work has been done since then, it’s a classic and very readable.

I’ve been revisiting this world since the Algorithm Gods of YouTube tossed Dr. Irving Finkel my way. I don’t know if he’s even still alive, but he is or was a Curator at the British Museum, has a beard like Santa Claus, and is a delight to listen to. Very witty.

[alittlelark]

10. Very interesting, I have never heard the tale

Thank You !! 🤓

[Hekate]

12. Enjoy. If you like a feminist psychological interpretation, Maureen Murdoch's "The Heroine's Journey"...

…utilizes this myth extensively. Short version: Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” wasn’t written with women in mind.

What I loved about the Inanna myth when I discovered it in the 1990s was realizing that it lay buried and unknown for a couple of millenia while the Greco-Roman myths lived on in the West and finally formed the foundation of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis. It blew my mind to think about the implications.

This is cheering me up.

[alittlelark]

14. I'm gonna have to dive into that soon

🤓🙏🏻

[Baitball Blogger]

3. She needs to go to Crete and try to decipher the

Phaistos disk.

[Zorro]

4. Cretan Linear A, too

Wonder if AI could figure those out.

[Baitball Blogger]

6. If I had access to AI tools, that would be the first thing I would do.

I would plug in all the hieroglyphics around the world in one database and ask AI to give me its best guess on what it says.

[nuxvomica]

5. I bet the fox completed its misson

Probably more to it than just that though.

[Hekate]

9. I agree -- it would be a wonderful thing to read, even in fragments