This post presents my translation of a royal brick inscription of Gudea wherein he documents his achievement of the construction of Inanna’s E-girsu temple. Gudea was the ruler of the city-state of Lagaš in the second half of the 22nd cent. BCE. He is known especially for his administrative achievements, into which the Gudea cones, cylinders, bricks, and statues provide insight. Deriving from Tell Tello, Iraq (ancient Girsu), this fired clay brick with stamped inscription is currently housed at the British Museum (museum number: 90288); its dimensions are 31 cm. in length, 30.5 cm. in width, and 7.5 cm thick.
In what follows, we present the brick inscription’s image and line drawing followed by a transliteration of the cuneiform, a morphological analysis, translation, and brief philological commentary.
Image and Line Drawing
For the image and line drawing of E3.1.1.7.18 (BM No. 90288) from the British Museum website, see here.
Transliteration
dinana [1]| nin kur-kur-ra | nin-a-ni | gu3-de2-a | ensi2[2] | lagaški[3] | ur g̃a2-tum3-du10-ke4 | e2 g̃ir2-su2ki-ka-ni | mu-na-du3
The reduplication of kur in the writing /kur.kur/ indicates totality: “all the lands”.
Gudea calls himself the “servant (lit., ‘dog’) of Gatumdu”. Of unknown etymology, the mother goddess Gatumdu(g) was a tutelary deity of Lagaš and special protectress of Gudea (Volk, Sumerian Chrestomathy, p. 106).
The main verb of the sentence, namely /mu.na.(n.)dù(.∅)/, is ḫamṭu transitive 3rd sg. animate comprised of a conjugation prefix /mu/, 3rd sg. dative verbal prefix /na/, and verbal base /dù/ ‘to build, construct’. Additionally, it is marked in the morphological analysis with an implied 3rd sg. anim. pronominal prefix /n./ as well as implied zero-marked 3rd sg. obj. suffix.
Bibliography
Edzard, Dietz Otto. Gudea and His Dynasty. Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, vol. 3/1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.
Volk, Konrad. A Sumerian Chrestomathy. Subsidia et Instrumenta Linguarum Orientis 5. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012.
Matthew Saunders is a PhD student in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He researches the languages and literatures of the ancient Near East, especially Aramaic Studies, Ugaritic Studies, and Comparative Semitics.