Position in chronology
Gudea Statue H
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(i 1) For Bau, the kind woman, the child of An, the lady of Iri-kug, the lady of abundance, the child of holy An, his lady, after building her beloved temple, the E-tarsirsir, the temple which is the ornament of Iri-kug, Gudea, ruler of Lagaš, transported diorite from the mountains of Magan, fashioned his statue from it, named it for her sake "The lady, the beloved child of holy An, mother Bau from E-tarsirsir, granted well-being to Gudea"; and brought it before her in the temple in Iri-kug.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
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 Q001547.
Attribution
Image: .
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/Q001547/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.