Position in chronology
A prayer (?) for Rim-Sin (Rim-Sin A)
Translation · reference
High confidenceMay Enlil, king of heaven and earth, whose utterances are trusty and whose words are ......, ...... the shepherd Rim-Sîn, ...... my king ....... May he who gives him life-giving (?) food-offerings in Nibru stand in prayer before him. May Enlil bestow upon him grain, the benefit of mankind. May he pass his time in joy in the ...... of his country. They will ...... Rim-Sîn my king. May he strengthen for him his royal throne and extend his reign. May he decree his sceptre for the south and the uplands. May he make the king's inferiors bow down before him. The offerings of Rim-Sîn my king, small or great, at Nibru in the E-kur ....... Syrup shall drip like ghee from its fingers. I am as the son of one man, honey and ghee. My king, let offerings ...... in my joy. They give me silver .......
Source: ETCSL c.2.6.9.1: A prayer (?) for Rim-Sin (Rim-Sin A). Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E. & Zólyomi, G. (eds.), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.2.6.9.1
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Composition c.2.6.9.1 in the ETCSL catalogue. Sumerian literary text reconstructed from multiple cuneiform manuscripts, the great majority Old Babylonian (c. 1900–1600 BCE). Translation reproduced from the ETCSL edition.
Attribution
Image: .
Translation excerpted from ETCSL c.2.6.9.1: A prayer (?) for Rim-Sin (Rim-Sin A). Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E. & Zólyomi, G. (eds.), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.2.6.9.1.
Related tablets
Related sources
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.
The single most influential Mesopotamian king list — the model for every later attempt to chronicle the deep history of the region. It transmits the political theology of divinely granted kingship, an idea that would echo through Babylon, Assyria, and into the Hebrew Bible. The Weld-Blundell prism (WB 444) at the Ashmolean is the most complete surviving copy.