Wednesday, October 7, 2026
They Buried
We Dug It Up
⌕ Search
PX-1908
PUBLISHED SCHOLARSHIP
INVENTED FOR A FICTIONAL NEWSPAPER

Adeleke-Sørvaag, concordance of Ur III administrative closing formulae (1998), §4

Origin
A university press
Dated
1998
Extent
340 pages
Status
accepted
Redactions
None.

Chain of custody

A book. It has been in print for twenty-eight years, is held by the library four hundred metres from this newspaper's office, and cost $61. Its existence is the entire finding of our Null Result of 9 August, and this newspaper had not opened it in three years of reporting on the subject it covers.

Held by: Public; copy held by They Buried

Excerpt

§4.11  ša ERÍN.MEŠ la ib-ba-šu-ú  — "and the fault was not with the workmen"

  Standard closing for shortfall returns. 211 attestations across the corpus,
  distributed: Ur 96, Umma 71, Girsu 44. Occurs on grain, copper, gold, hide
  and reed schedules without distinction. See table 4.11a for the full list.

Transcribed by the data desk. Line breaks follow the original. Bracketed matter is ours.

Editor's note

Filed here as a document because it is the one we should have read first and did not. The Vault exists to record what a story rests on; it should also record what a story failed to rest on.

Cited in