RIME 3/2.01.01.26, ex. add17

~2050 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P418024

About this tablet

A royal building inscription of Ur-Namma, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur (around 2100 BCE), the king best known today for the world's earliest surviving law code. In it he dedicates two public works to Enlil, chief god of the Sumerian pantheon: the rebuilding of the god's temple and the digging of a canal named En-erin-nun, which supplied the offerings for the god's table. Such inscriptions were stamped or written on bricks and foundation objects in many copies — this is one of dozens of surviving duplicates, a piece of state propaganda literally built into the fabric of the city.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Ur-Namma, king of Ur and ruler of Sumer and Akkad, dedicates this work to Enlil, king of all the lands and his divine master. He rebuilt Enlil's temple, and he also dug the canal called En-erin-nun — the waterway that carried the food offerings destined for the god. In short: the king announces, in the god's honor, a temple restoration and an irrigation project rolled into one act of royal piety.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

High confidence

For Enlil, king of all the lands, his master, Ur-Namma, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad, built his temple for him, (and) dug for him the En-erin-nun canal, his canal of food offerings.

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

en-[lil2]
lugal kur-kur-[ra]
lugal-a-ni
ur-[namma]
lugal uri5-ma
lugal ki-en-gi ki-uri-ke4
e2-a-ni
mu-na-du3
i7 en-erin2-nun
i7 nidba-ka-ni
mu-na-ba-al

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — RIME 3/2.01.01.26, ex. add17. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: NM 35.0061 (Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P418024). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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