Position in chronology
BM 137412
About this tablet
A Middle Babylonian royal building inscription in Sumerian, recording the restoration of the Ekišnugal — the great temple of the moon-god Nanna/Sîn at Ur. The unnamed king is titled 'king of the four quarters of heaven,' a grand imperial title, and boasts that he rebuilt an ancient temple that had fallen into ruin, returning it to its original foundations. Such inscriptions were typically deposited in the foundations of temples as a record for future rulers and the gods themselves. This fragment, now in the British Museum, is too damaged to name the specific king, but the restoration of Nanna's temple at Ur was a prestigious act carried out by several Babylonian rulers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Translation · reference
Medium confidence[The king of the four] quarters [of heaven], the Ekišnugal — the [temple] of old, from [days] of yore built (and) completed — he built for him; to its (former) place he restored it; its foundations he re-established.
Source: engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-12/v4-interpretation)
Translation · AI engine
read from photo[The king of the four] quarters [of heaven], the Ekišnugal — the [temple] of old, from [days] of yore built (and) completed — he built for him; to its (former) place he restored it; its foundations he re-established.
5 uncertain terms ↓
- lugal an ub-da limmu2-ba — Standard Sumerian royal epithet 'king of the four quarters (of heaven)'; the specific signs are broken in the photo and supplied by restoration from parallel inscriptions.
- e2-kisz-nu-gal2 — The name of the moon-god Nanna/Sîn's temple at Ur, literally 'house, great light'; transliteration is clear and confirmed visually.
- ba-du3-a ba-til — 'Built (and) completed' — the two verbal forms describe the original construction; ba-til can also mean 'finished/perfected', ambiguity is minor.
- ki-bi-sze3 bi2-in-gi4-a — 'He restored it to its (former) place' — gi4 in this context means to return/restore; a stock phrase in Babylonian temple restoration inscriptions.
- suhusz-bi im-mi-in-gi4 — 'He re-established its foundations' — suhusz is literally 'base/foundation'; im-mi-in-gi4 is again the verb gi4 'to restore/return', used here for laying or confirming foundations.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a roughly rectangular clay tablet approximately 10–11 cm wide. The upper-left quadrant preserves clear, well-incised cuneiform wedges arranged in horizontal ruled lines — probably 9–10 visible lines. The right half and lower portions of the obverse are heavily abraded, with only faint traces of signs remaining and no readable text recoverable from the photo in those areas. The preserved left column aligns well with the scholar-provided transliteration: I can make out sign clusters consistent with e2-kisz-nu-gal2 (the temple name), repeated vertical and diagonal wedge groups consistent with the ba- and mu- verbal prefixes, and what appear to be ki-bi-sze3 and suhusz signs in the lower preserved lines. The museum label 'BM 137412 / WAA 58' is visible. The initial royal title '[lugal an] ub-da [limmu2-ba]' is in a damaged top-left corner and cannot be independently confirmed from the photo, consistent with the supplied brackets. No significant discrepancies between photo and transliteration were detected in the legible zone; the right half cannot be verified from the photo due to surface erosion.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 12, 2026 · 3463 in / 911 out tokens
Why it matters
Transliteration
[lugal an] ub#-da# [limmu2-ba] e2-kisz-nu-gal2 [e2] libir#-ra [u4]-ul#-li2-a-ta [ba]-du3-a ba-til mu#-na-du3 ki#-bi-sze3 bi2#-in-gi4-a suhusz#-bi im#-mi-in-gi4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Middle Babylonian (ca. 1400-1100 BC)) — BM 137412. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P428556) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-12/v4-interpretation).
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.