Position in chronology
Anonymous Nippur 21 (FAOS 05/2, AnNip 21)
Written in modern English
Someone dedicated this plate to an unnamed deity or person — the dedicatee's name is lost — and identified the giver as a midwife.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1') To ..., ..., the midwife, dedicated this (plate).
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
Preserves a dedicatory inscription naming a midwife as the dedicant — one of the earliest textual attestations of that profession in ancient Mesopotamia.
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 Q001276.
Attribution
Image: ROM 962.143.014 (Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P222777). source
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/Q001276/.
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