Position in chronology
Amar-Suena 12
Written in modern English
Amar-Suena, powerful king of Ur and king of the four quarters of the world, built a jail in Ur for the god Nanna. He named it 'Amar-Suena is the beloved of Nanna.'
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1) Amar-Suena, the powerful king, king of Urim, king of the four quarters, built for (Nanna) the jail in Urim. The name of this jail is "Amar-Suena is the beloved of Nanna".
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
Records Amar-Suena's construction of a royal jail at Ur — one of the earliest explicit textual attestations of a dedicated carceral institution in Mesopotamian history.
Scholarly note
Sumerian royal inscription, published in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI) by Gábor Zólyomi and collaborators. Translation reproduced from the ETCSRI edition. ORACC text Q001795.
Attribution
Image: BM 120520 (British Museum, London, UK) — from uncertain (mod. Diqdiqqah) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P226846). source
Translation excerpted from Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI), University of Vienna, edited by Gábor Zólyomi et al. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/etcsri/Q001795/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.