Position in chronology
Gudea Statue K
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(i 1') .... (ii 2) He transported diorite from the mountains of Magan, fashioned his statue from it, named it for her his sake “As I am ... loved by his master, may my life be prolonged!”, and brought it before him into the E-ninnu. (iii 1) Whoever erases its inscription, removes ..., or strips it from its regular offering, (which is) 1 sila of flour (and) 1 sila of husked emmer groats, may Ninĝirsu, the king of weapons, Bau, the child of An, and Ig-alima and Šul-šagana, the beloved children of Ninĝirsu, uproot him, (and) put an end to his lineage!
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 Q001549.
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/Q001549/.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.