Position in chronology
An adab of Inana for Ur-Ninurta (Ur-Ninurta D)
Written in modern English
Inana surpasses every god in the Anuna assembly and has gathered all divine powers into herself. Her gaze sweeps heaven and earth with sovereign authority; her divine plans are unalterable and far-reaching; her designs run as deep as the abzu, and no one has ever managed to fathom them. No god rivals her in the greatness of her deeds. She gathered her divine powers on an auspicious day and let none of them slip away, and kingship itself is held fast in her hand. She stands as an equal to An, deciding fates alongside him, and her decrees carry the same weight as Enlil's. In all of heaven and earth, she has no rival.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSLGoddess who excels the Anuna gods, who has gathered together all the divine powers! Your gaze is lordly as it surveys all the foreign lands in heaven and earth. Inana, lioness shining in the heavens, your divine powers are most complex, your cultic ordinances are unalterable, and your divine plans are influential. barsud. Your ideas are as profound as the abzu; no one is known to have perceived them. Your actions are very great, and there is no god to rival you. You fetched your divine powers on a favourable day, and none of them escaped you. You have secured the kingship, and nothing escapes from your hand. You have equal rank with An the king, and you decide destinies with him. Your utterances are as well-established as those of Enlil. Grandiloquent Inana, you have no rival in heaven or on earth.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — scholar edition (Oxford, Black/Cunningham/Robson/Zólyomi).
Scholarly note
Composition c.2.5.6.4 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.2.5.6.4: An adab of Inana for Ur-Ninurta (Ur-Ninurta D). 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.2.5.6.4.
Related tablets
Related sources
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.
The single most influential Mesopotamian king list — the model for every later attempt to chronicle the deep history of the region. It transmits the political theology of divinely granted kingship, an idea that would echo through Babylon, Assyria, and into the Hebrew Bible. The Weld-Blundell prism (WB 444) at the Ashmolean is the most complete surviving copy.