Position in chronology
RIME 3/2.01.01.11, ex. add164
About this tablet
A royal building inscription of Ur-Namma, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur (around 2100 BCE), stamped or inscribed on bricks by the thousands. It commemorates his construction of the E-temen-ni-guru, the great ziggurat complex of the moon-god Nanna at Ur — the massive stepped temple tower whose remains still dominate the site today. Duplicates of this short dedication survive in museums worldwide; this exemplar is held in Sydney. It is one of the most familiar texts of Mesopotamian kingship: a ruler advertising his piety to his city's patron god in a formula every literate person of the age would recognize.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This brick announces: Ur-Namma, the mighty man, king of Ur, built this temple — the E-temen-ni-guru — for his lord Nanna, the moon-god, whom the text praises as the spirited young calf of the sky-god An and the first-born son of Enlil. In modern terms, it is a dedication plaque built right into the fabric of the ziggurat: the king's name, his titles, the god honored, and the deed done, all in one compact statement.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineFor Nanna, the impetuous calf of An, the first-born son of Enlil, his lord — Ur-Namma, the mighty man, king of Ur, built his E-temen-ni-guru.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
nanna amar banda3 an-na dumu-sag en-lil2-la2 lugal-a-ni ur-namma nita kal-ga lugal uri5-ma-ke4 e2-temen-ni2-gur3#-ni mu-na-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — RIME 3/2.01.01.11, ex. add164. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: NM 35.0060 (Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P418023). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.