Position in chronology
RIME 1.14.20.01, ex. 49
About this tablet
A fragment of a stone vase dedicated at Nippur by Lugalzagesi, king of Uruk and Umma (c. 2350 BCE) — one of dozens of shattered exemplars of his famous inscription found in the temple of Enlil. The surviving lines belong to the boast that the god Enlil made all lands, 'from sunrise to sunset,' submit to the king, and mention Umma, Lugalzagesi's home city, and its god Šara. It is one of the earliest surviving claims to something like universal empire, written just before Sargon of Akkad overthrew Lugalzagesi and made the same claim for himself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives says this: the god put everything at the king's feet, and from east to west — from where the sun rises to where it sets — he made the lands bow to him. At that moment, from the sea (the text goes on toward the Lower Sea and beyond, though the words are broken here), and then the fragment names Umma, calling it a city, together with its god Šara — likely part of the phrase 'Umma, beloved city of Šara.' The beginning and end of the passage are lost with the rest of the vase.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(beginning broken) [... he] set [it (all the lands at his feet)], from [the] rising of the sun (the east) to the setting of the sun (the west), he made (them) subject to him. At that time, [from the] Sea (the [Lower] Sea), from the [lower(?)] ..., Umma, the city [...], [of the god] Šara [...] (remainder broken)
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
[...] [e]-ni#-se3#-[...] utu#-e3-[x] utu-szu2-[x] gu2 e-na-gar-ra#-[x] u4#-ba [x]-ab#-ba [x]-ta#-ta# umma#[] iri# [...] [szara2-x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — RIME 1.14.20.01, ex. 49. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P264985) — 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.