Position in chronology
Sin-kašid 02
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1) Sin-kašid, the powerful man, king of Unug, king of Amnanum, built his royal palace.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
Royal building inscription of Sin-kašid attesting his dual titles — king of Uruk and of the Amnanum tribe — evidence that Amorite chieftains ruled major Sumerian cities in the Isin-Larsa period.
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 Q002239.
Attribution
Image: HMA 9-02257 (Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA) — from Uruk (mod. Warka) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P248013). 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/Q002239/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.