Position in chronology
RIME 3/1.01.07.048, ex. add092
About this tablet
This is a short royal dedicatory inscription of Gudea, ruler (ensi) of Lagash around 2100 BCE, likely inscribed on a brick, door socket, or similar object from the temple complex at Girsu. It commemorates Gudea's construction of a subsidiary shrine, the 'E-PA,' described as 'his house of seven corners,' built as an offering for the god Ningirsu, the tutelary warrior-deity of Lagash and son of Enlil. Such inscriptions were embedded in the temple's fabric itself, meant to be read by the gods and by posterity as proof of the king's piety and building works.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This inscription honors Ningirsu, the mighty champion of the god Enlil and Gudea's own divine lord. It records that Gudea, ruler of Lagash — the same king who built Ningirsu's great temple, the Eninnu — also built for him a smaller shrine called the E-PA, described as 'his house of seven corners.' The text is a standard temple-building dedication, naming the king, the god he served, and the specific structure he raised in the god's honor.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[For Ningirsu], [the mighty warrior] of En[lil], his master (lord): Gudea, ruler of Lagash, the one who built the E-ninnu of Ningirsu — [the E-PA, his house of seven corners (niches),] 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.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[nin-gir2-su] [ur-sag kal-ga] en-[lil2-la2-ra] lugal-a-[ni] gu3-de2#-[a] ensi2# lagasz#[-ke4] lu2 e2#-[ninnu] nin-gir2-[su-ka] [in-du3-a] [e2-PA e2-ub-imin-a-ni] [mu-na-du3]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Lagash II (ca. 2200-2100 BC)) — RIME 3/1.01.07.048, ex. add092. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: WCMA 20.1.03 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424370). 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.
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.