Position in chronology
Gudea 008
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1) For Dumuzid-abzu, his lady, Gudea, ruler of Lagaš, built her temple in Ĝirsu.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Why it matters
Gudea's dedication of a temple to Dumuzid-abzu at Ĝirsu attests the ruler's active patronage of a goddess otherwise sparsely documented in royal building inscriptions of the Lagaš II 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 Q000892.
Attribution
Image: NYPLC 244 (New York Public Library, New York, New York, USA) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P232364). 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/Q000892/.
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.
An early witness to systematic administrative notation at Kish. Its signs and numerals can be catalogued, but that does not establish a full translation or prove that it is the world's first writing.
An early surviving historical monument that joins named rulers, a territorial dispute and religious oaths. It shows how a city-state turned victory into a lasting public claim, without establishing that this was the first recorded conflict.