Position in chronology
RIME 1.14.20.01, ex. 34
About this tablet
A fragment of a stone vase dedicated at Nippur by Lugalzagesi, king of Uruk and Umma (around 2350 BCE), one of dozens of copies of his famous inscription found in the temple of Enlil. In it, Lugalzagesi claims that Enlil gave him kingship over the entire land and subjected everything 'from sunrise to sunset' to him — one of the earliest surviving claims to universal empire in world history, made just before Sargon of Akkad actually built one. This piece preserves only the central boast of that grand text.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives here is the heart of a royal boast: the god Enlil turned the eyes of the whole nation toward this king, laid every foreign land at his feet, and made everything from the east — where the sun rises — submit to him (the matching phrase, 'to the west, where the sun sets,' stood in the lines now broken away). After a gap, only scraps remain: a possible mention of the sea, and the word 'king.' The rest of the inscription is lost on this fragment.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Break) [... (Enlil, king of all the lands,) ...] the eyes of the land he directed toward him, all the foreign lands at his feet he placed, and from sunrise (the east) [to sunset (the west) he made them submit to him ...] (Break) ... [the s]ea(?) [...] king(?) [...] (Break)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] igi# kalam#-ma-ke4# si e-na-sa2-a kur-kur giri3-na e-ni-se3!-ga-a utu#-e3-ta# [...] [...] a? [...] lugal#? [...] [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — RIME 1.14.20.01, ex. 34. 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 (P264955) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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