The Poor Man of Nippur
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 13). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: Main surviving tablet dated 701 BCE; composition earlier, exact date uncertain
Region: Babylonian tradition; manuscript found at Sultantepe, southeastern Turkey
Workbook date-sort bounds: 701 BCE to 701 BCE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
Gimil-Ninurta suffers an injustice from a mayor and gets revenge three times through tricks. Cambridge's Assyriology group filmed it in Babylonian.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
The story is preserved in a scribal literary manuscript and uses recognizable trickster narrative patterns.
What remains uncertain
A poor protagonist does not identify poor authors, audiences or an independently circulating movement.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria