Position in chronology
RIME 1.12.06.02, ex. add04
About this tablet
A royal inscription of Giššakidu, ruler of the Sumerian city-state of Umma around 2400 BCE, best known from the long-running and bitter border war between Umma and its neighbor Lagash. In it the king parades his divine credentials — beloved of Ištaran, the god of justice and boundaries, strong for Enlil, chosen by Inanna — and records that he built a boundary levee, the kind of earthwork whose exact placement repeatedly triggered war between the two cities. This clay tablet in the Schøyen Collection is one of several surviving copies of the text; the opening lines about a heartfelt prayer belong to a longer version whose beginning is not preserved here.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving text opens mid-sentence: a prayer, gathered in the heart, was spoken to him and reached him. Then comes the king's proclamation: Giššakidu — the beloved shepherd, the cherished friend of the god Ištaran, the mighty governor appointed by Enlil, the king whom Inanna called by name — built that boundary levee. In modern terms: the ruler of Umma announces, with the full weight of his divine endorsements, that he has constructed the earthen dike marking his city's border. The back of the tablet carries no readable text.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) ... the prayer gathered in the heart which was spoken to him, which came to him — Giššakidu, the beloved shepherd, the beloved friend of Ištaran, the mighty ruler of Enlil, the king called by name by Inanna, constructed that (boundary) levee. (Reverse uninscribed/eroded)
Our translation engine — Fable 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
ra2-zu# ur4 sza3-ga e-na-du11-ga e-na-gen-na gesz-sza3-ki-du10 sipa ki#-ag2#-ga2# ku-li ki-ag2# isztaran-ke4 ensi2 kal-ga en#-lil2-ke4 lugal# mu pa3# inanna-ke4 e-bi mu-ak
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — RIME 1.12.06.02, ex. add04. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P254014) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.