Position in chronology
En-anatum I 03
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(i 1) When Ninĝirsu chose him in the heart, En-ana-tum, ruler of Lagaš, child of Aya-kurgal, ruler of Lagaš, transported white cedar timbers from the mountains for him. (ii 4) From among those (En-ana-tum) used for the temple, he installed some white cedar timbers (also) as its roof for (Ninĝirsu). (iii 2) For Ninĝirsu, his master who loves him, he recorded (his) name on the lions of halub wood he had seated for him as doorkeepers.
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
Attests the transport of white cedar timber from distant mountains to Lagaš c. 2450 BCE, documenting the long-range resource networks that Early Dynastic rulers mobilized for temple construction under divine patronage.
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 Q001073.
Attribution
Image: BM 114706 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P222472). 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/Q001073/.
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.