Position in chronology
Anonymous Ur 23 (FAOS 05/2, AnUr 23)
Written in modern English
A name — presumably a ruler's — was proclaimed by the god Suen. The rest is lost: what survives is only a single partial line, identifying this person as the child of someone whose name the damaged surface no longer preserves.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1') ..., whose name was proclaimed by Suen, child of ....
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
One of the fragmentary Early Dynastic royal inscriptions from the Lagash-Ur-Uruk cluster, preserving a Suen-invocation formula that documents the lunar god's role in legitimising kingship two centuries before Akkadian unification.
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 Q001361.
Attribution
Image: CBS 14942 (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) — from Ur (mod. Tell Muqayyar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P222869). 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/Q001361/.
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.