Position in chronology
RIME 1.14.20.01, ex. 13
About this tablet
A fragment of a stone vase from Nippur carrying one of the most famous royal inscriptions of the Early Dynastic period, around 2350 BCE. Lugalzagesi, king of Uruk and Umma, dedicated dozens of such vases to Enlil in his temple at Nippur, proclaiming that Enlil had granted him kingship over the whole Land of Sumer — the earliest surviving claim to something like universal rule in Mesopotamia. This piece preserves the pivotal clause of that proclamation. Lugalzagesi's boast was short-lived: he was defeated and paraded in a neck-stock by Sargon of Akkad.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives on this broken piece of vase is the heart of a royal proclamation. After the tail end of the king's long string of titles — something 'exalted', a dedication involving a plural group — the text declares: when Enlil, king of all the lands, gave the kingship of the Land to Lugalzagesi, and turned the eyes of the whole country toward him... The sentence continues onto parts of the vase now lost, where the full inscription goes on to describe how Enlil put all lands at his feet and gave him rule from sea to sea.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(vessel fragment; beginnings of all lines lost) [...] of [...], the exalted [...], for the [...]s, [when] Enlil, king of all the lands, to Lugalzagesi the [king]ship of the Land had [gi]ven, [and the eyes(?)] of the Land [he had directed toward him] ...
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
[...]-ga#-ka# [x]-mah# [...]-ne-ra [x ]en#-lil2 lugal# kur-kur-ra-ke4# lugal#-za3-ge-si# [x]-lugal kalam#-ma [...]-szum2-ma-a [x] kalam#-ma-ke4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — RIME 1.14.20.01, ex. 13. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P264683) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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