Position in chronology
Anonymous Nippur 60 (FAOS 05/2, AnNip 60)
Written in modern English
Someone — whose name is lost — dedicated something to a deity for his own well-being and for the well-being of his wife and children. Everything before this closing formula is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1') ... for his own well-being and for the well-being of his spouse and šhildren.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
Attests the Early Dynastic Sumerian formula linking a ruler's personal welfare to that of his household — one of the earliest epigraphic anchors for the ideology of dynastic continuity at Nippur.
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 Q001313.
Attribution
Image: CBS 10109 (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P222816). 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/Q001313/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.