Position in chronology
E-IGI.NIM-pa'e 2
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSRI(1) For Diĝir-mah, E-iginim-pa-e, ruler of Adab, built the E-mah. At its base, he drove in foundation pegs.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions — scholar edition (Vienna).
Why it matters
Commemorates E-iginim-pa'e of Adab's construction of the E-mah temple for the goddess Diĝir-mah, attesting royal building piety and the foundation-peg ritual at one of Sumer's lesser-documented city-states.
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 Q001201.
Attribution
Image: Erm 14376 (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P222695). 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/Q001201/.
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.