Position in chronology
Laws of Lipit-Eštar (RIME 4.01.05.add10 (Laws of Lipit-Ishtar) composite)
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) When the great An, father of the gods, and Enlil, king of all lands, who decides the fates, looked joyfully with a radiant smile at Ninisina, An’s child, because of the authority of the humble lady, and gave a propitious reign and the kingship of Sumer and Akkad to Isin, the border territory founded by An; (20) at the time, when An and Enlil chose Lipit-Eštar, the observant shepherd, whose name was proclaimed by Nunamnir, as the prince of the Land to establish justice in the Land, to eliminate complaints from (the people’s) mouth, to push back wickedness and violence with weapons, and to…
Source: Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI), University of Vienna, edited by Gábor Zólyomi et al. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/etcsri/Q000613/
Why it matters
Predates Hammurabi by roughly 150 years, recording Lipit-Eštar's mandate from An and Enlil to 'establish justice' — an early articulation of the Mesopotamian ideology that divine authority underwrites royal law-giving.
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Sumerian royal inscription, published in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI) by Gábor Zólyomi and collaborators. Translation reproduced from the ETCSRI edition. ORACC text Q000613.
Attribution
Image: UM 29-15-448 (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P256242). source
Translation excerpted from Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions (ETCSRI), University of Vienna, edited by Gábor Zólyomi et al. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/etcsri/Q000613/.
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