Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

A shir-namshub to Inana (Inana G)

~1800 BCE·Old Babylonian

Written in modern English

Inana speaks in her own voice, listing every sacred place she is heading toward: the abzu, the holy city of Eridu, the shrines E-engura and E-ana, the temple of Enlil, the place where great offering bowls stand open to the sky, and the places where lord Enki, Damgalnuna, and Asarluhi are honored — though several of those destinations are too damaged to read. When she makes this journey, she brings a dog, what may be a lion, boxwood, and halub wood with her. At the end, she receives something — the object is lost to a crack in the surface — as she arrives.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — scholar edition

ETCSL
High confidence
When I go, when I go -- the mighty queen who ......, who ......; when I, the queen, go to the abzu, when I, Inana, go to the abzu, when I go to the abzu, the shrine, when I go to Eridug the good, when I go to E-engura, when I go to E-ana, the temple of Enlil, when I go to ......, when I go to where the great offering bowls stand in the open air, when I go to where the ...... pure ...... bowls, when I go to where ...... is honoured, when I go to where lord Enki is honoured, when I go to where Damgalnuna ...... is honoured, when I go to where Asarluhi ...... is honoured -- then I bring a dog with me, I bring a lion (?) with me, I bring boxwood with me, I bring halub wood with me. I, Inana, receive the little ......, when I travel there, when I travel there.

Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — scholar edition (Oxford, Black/Cunningham/Robson/Zólyomi).

Scholarly note

Composition c.4.07.7 in the ETCSL catalogue. Sumerian literary text reconstructed from multiple cuneiform manuscripts, the great majority Old Babylonian (c. 1900–1600 BCE). Translation reproduced from the ETCSL edition.

Attribution

Image: .
Translation excerpted from ETCSL c.4.07.7: A shir-namshub to Inana (Inana G). Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E. & Zólyomi, G. (eds.), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.4.07.7.

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