Position in chronology
An adab of Ninurta for Ur-Ninurta (Ur-Ninurta C)
Translation · reference
High confidenceHero, terror-inspiring dragon of exceptional fearsome terror, powerful Ninurta! Rising hurricane, ......, mighty possessor of august strength, who lets no foreign land escape! Fitted for heroism from the womb, unrivalled! barsud. You who treat as hostile the cities as well as the unsettled areas, the rebel lands -- Ninurta, as you pass by, like a terrifying fierce lion (?) you make heaven and earth tremble from east to west. When in judgment, like a hero possessing great strength, you batter a rebel land, by day you thrust, by night you rear up, and you leave the rebel land lying prone. If you merely lift your gaze, you make the great hills tremble (?) together.
Source: ETCSL c.2.5.6.3: An adab of Ninurta for Ur-Ninurta (Ur-Ninurta C). 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.2.5.6.3
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Composition c.2.5.6.3 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.2.5.6.3: An adab of Ninurta for Ur-Ninurta (Ur-Ninurta C). 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.2.5.6.3.
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.