Position in chronology
BM 137412
About this tablet
A Middle Babylonian royal building inscription commemorating the restoration of the Ekišnugal, the great temple of the moon-god Sîn at Ur. A king — whose name is lost in the damaged opening line — claims the title 'king of the four quarters' and records that he rebuilt this ancient sanctuary after it had fallen into ruin, restoring it to its original form and relaying its foundations. Building inscriptions like this were typically deposited in the foundation deposits of the very temples they describe, intended to be read by future rulers rather than a living audience. The Ekišnugal at Ur was one of the most prestigious cult-sites in Mesopotamia, and royal claims to have restored it were politically as well as piously significant.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The king of the four quarters rebuilt the Ekišnugal — the ancient temple of the moon-god at Ur — for the deity. This temple had stood since the earliest days and had eventually fallen into ruin. The king rebuilt it for him, returning it to its original place and relaying its very foundations.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[The king of the] four [quarters], the Ekišnugal — the [temple] of old, which from [distant] days had been built (and) had fallen into ruin — he (re)built (it) for him; to its (former) place he restored it; its foundations he refounded.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo5 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
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 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.