Position in chronology
Anonymous Nippur 65add
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1') ..., the chief governor of Enlil.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
A fragmentary Early Dynastic royal inscription from Nippur, one of the earliest attestations linking royal authority to the office of chief governor of Enlil — evidence of how Sumerian kingship was legitimised through priestly-administrative titles c. 2450 BCE.
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 Q004246.
Attribution
Image: KM 63.6.001 + IM 058907a (Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P247517). 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/Q004246/.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.