Position in chronology
The exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
Translation · reference
High confidenceLady of all the divine powers, resplendent light, righteous woman clothed in radiance, beloved of An and Urac! Mistress of heaven, with the great pectoral jewels, who loves the good headdress befitting the office of en priestess, who has seized all seven of its divine powers! My lady, you are the guardian of the great divine powers! You have taken up the divine powers, you have hung the divine powers from your hand. You have gathered up the divine powers, you have clasped the divine powers to your breast. Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the foreign lands. When like Ickur you roar at the earth, no vegetation can stand up to you. As a flood descending upon (?) those foreign lands, powerful one of heaven and earth, you are their Inana.
Source: ETCSL c.4.07.2: The exaltation of Inana (Inana 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.4.07.2
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Composition c.4.07.2 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.4.07.2: The exaltation of Inana (Inana 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.4.07.2.
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.