Position in chronology
RIME 3/1.01.07.040, ex. add06
About this tablet
This is a classic royal building inscription of Gudea, ruler (ensi) of the city-state of Lagash in southern Mesopotamia, around 2100 BCE. It commemorates his construction of the Eninnu, the great temple of the warrior-god Ningirsu, whose epithet here links him to the sky-god Enlil. Dozens of nearly identical inscribed objects — bricks, cones, statues, door sockets — were produced for this same building project, making Gudea one of the best-documented rulers of the ancient Near East precisely because of texts like this one.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This inscription honors Ningirsu, Enlil's mighty warrior-god. Gudea, ruler of Lagash, made everything fitting and splendid in his honor, and built for him the temple called Eninnu, 'the White Thunderbird' (or 'White Anzu').
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineFor Ningirsu, mighty warrior of Enlil, Gudea, ruler of Lagash, made fitting things resplendent for him; his Eninnu, the White Thunderbird (Anzu), he built for him.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
nin-gir2-su ur-sag kal-ga en-lil2-la2-ra gu3-de2-a ensi2 lagasz-ke4 nig2-du7-e pa mu-na-e3 e2-ninnu anzu2-babbar2-ra-ni mu-na-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Lagash II (ca. 2200-2100 BC)) — RIME 3/1.01.07.040, ex. add06. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: MUL 22000-11412-1bis (Meiji University Library, Tokyo, Japan) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P504430). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.