Position in chronology
Ur-Nanše 07
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1) Ur-Nanše, king of Lagaš, child of Gunidu, built the shrine of Ĝirsu.
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 Ur-Nanše's construction of the Ĝirsu shrine, anchoring his reign's temple-building program — the political-religious foundation of Lagašite dynastic legitimacy circa 2450 BCE.
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 Q001017.
Attribution
Image: MRAH O.0023 (Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P222342). 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/Q001017/.
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.