Position in chronology
Gudea 019
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1) For Inana, the lady of all lands, his lady, Gudea, ruler of Lagaš, built her temple in Ĝirsu.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
Attests Gudea of Lagaš's construction of a temple to Inana at Ĝirsu, adding one data point to the corpus of his building activity in the late 3rd millennium.
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 Q000897.
Attribution
Image: SM 1906.02.010 (Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P406263). 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/Q000897/.
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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.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.