Position in chronology
A shir-namshub to Nisaba (Nisaba B)
Written in modern English
Shrine after shrine is gone — the house of Nisaba, keeper of the tablets, is destroyed; the house of Nunbarcegunu is destroyed; the E-hamun is destroyed. Where the walls once stood, long grass and cumunda grass have pushed through, and willow trees have spread across the ruins. The anger of An and the malice of Enlil hang over everything. Then Nisaba speaks, asking that moonlight enter her house — but the tablet breaks off there, and the rest of her words are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSL...... is destroyed. ...... is destroyed. It is destroyed. ...... of Nisaba is destroyed. The house of Nisaba, her of the tablets, is destroyed. The house of ...... is destroyed. The house of Nunbarcegunu is destroyed. ......, the E-hamun is destroyed. The plants of lamentation have sprouted; the cumunda grass has sprouted. By the walls the long grass has sprouted. Amongst them, the willow trees are everywhere. As for the word of An and the word of Enlil, the angry heart of great An is everywhere, and the malign heart of Enlil is everywhere. (Nisaba speaks:) "In my house, may the moonlight in…
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — scholar edition (Oxford, Black/Cunningham/Robson/Zólyomi).
Scholarly note
Composition c.4.16.2 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.4.16.2: A shir-namshub to Nisaba (Nisaba B). 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.4.16.2.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.