Position in chronology
Gudea 004
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1) For Bau, the kind woman, the child of An, the lady of Iri-kug, his lady, Gudea, ruler of Lagaš, the builder of Ninĝirsu's E-ninnu and the E-ĝidru, his temple of seven niches, built her temple in Iri-kug.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
Records Gudea of Lagaš's construction of a temple to Bau at Iri-kug, anchoring the goddess's cult site to a specific Lagašite ruler and expanding the known catalogue of his building projects beyond the celebrated E-ninnu.
Scholarly note
Sumerian royal inscription, published in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI) by Gábor Zólyomi and collaborators. Translation reproduced from the ETCSRI edition. ORACC text Q000890.
Attribution
Image: IMJ 87.160.0649 (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P232333). source
Translation excerpted from Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI), University of Vienna, edited by Gábor Zólyomi et al. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/etcsri/Q000890/.
Related tablets
Related sources
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.