Position in chronology
A tigi to Enlil for Ur-Namma (Ur-Namma B)
Translation · reference
High confidenceExalted Enlil, ...... fame ......, lord who ...... his great princedom, Nunamnir, king of heaven and earth ......, looked around among the people. The Great Mountain, Enlil, chose Ur-Namma the good shepherd from the multitude of people: "Let him be the shepherd of Nunamnir!" He made him emanate (?) fierce awesomeness. The divine plans of brick-built E-kur were drawn up. The Great Mountain, Enlil, made up his mind, filled with pure and useful thoughts, to make them shine like the sun in the E-kur, his august shrine. He instructed the shepherd Ur-Namma to make the E-kur rise high; the king made…
Source: ETCSL c.2.4.1.2: A tigi to Enlil for Ur-Namma (Ur-Namma B). 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.2.4.1.2
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Composition c.2.4.1.2 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.2.4.1.2: A tigi to Enlil for Ur-Namma (Ur-Namma B). 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.2.4.1.2.
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.