Position in chronology
RIME 3/2.01.02.012, ex. add10
About this tablet
A standard royal building inscription of Šulgi, second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur (reigned ca. 2094–2047 BCE). In nine short lines it commemorates his construction (or rebuilding) of a temple for Ningirsu, the warrior god of the Lagash region. Inscriptions like this were stamped or carved on bricks and foundation objects in many identical copies, so this exemplar is one of a well-known series — a piece of royal self-advertisement designed to be read by the gods and by future rulers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a dedication: Šulgi, the powerful king of Ur and ruler of all Sumer and Akkad, built this temple for his divine lord Ningirsu, the mighty warrior god. That is the entire message — a permanent, official record that the king carried out this pious construction project in the god's honor.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineFor Ningirsu, the mighty warrior, his lord — Šulgi, the mighty man, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad, built his (Ningirsu's) temple.
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
nin#-gir2#-su# ur#-sag# kal#-ga lugal-a-ni szul-gi nita kal-ga lugal uri5#-ma lugal ki-en-gi ki-uri-ke4 e2-a-ni mu-na-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — RIME 3/2.01.02.012, ex. add10. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Kress 088 (private: anonymous, Germany) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P373956). 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.