Position in chronology
Enlil and Sud
Translation · reference
High confidence...... she was faithfully sitting (?) on ......, admirable and full of charms. ......, the noble son -- who like him can compare with An and Enlil? Haia, the ......, put the holy semen into her womb. Nun-bar-ce-gunu (a name of Nisaba) faithfully gave birth to ......, she brought her up in her ...... and suckled her at her breasts full of good milk. The ...... of the young girl burgeoned, and she became full of flourishing beauty. In the ...... of Nisaba, at the gate of the E-zagin, ...... she stood, the object of admiration, like a tall, beautifully shaped cow. At that time Enlil had not yet…
Source: ETCSL c.1.2.2: Enlil and Sud. 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.1.2.2
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Composition c.1.2.2 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.1.2.2: Enlil and Sud. 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.1.2.2.
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.