The following text is a royal inscription with over 150 exemplars on brick and clay cones known from G̃irsu, Uruk, and of unknown provenance. Gudea documents his achievement of the construction of Nindara’s temple at G̃irsu. 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.
In what follows, we present the inscription’s line drawing followed by a transliteration of the cuneiform, a morphological analysis, translation, and brief philological commentary. N.b., I deviate in my morphological transcription from standard convention in a few ways. For example, I supply implied morphological structures that are not identifiable in the cuneiform writing through parenthesis, e.g. (.ra) for an implied dative, as well as the auslauts of words.
Image and Line Drawing
Image: RIME 3/1.1.7.31, ex. 133 (P417405) from the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology. For CDLI page, see here.
nindara (PN): Nindara is a lesser known deity worshiped in the state of Lagaš. The husband of Nanše, his cult center was at Ki’eš.
uru16: This is the same sign as /en/ ‘lord’. One of its readings as an adjective is /uru16/ meaning ‘strong, clever, noble’.
é g̃írsu.ak.ani(.∅) ‘his E-g̃irsu temple’: Morphologically, the signs /-ka-ni/ conceal the genitive plus 3rd sg. anim. suff. This phrase can also be translated as ‘his temple at G̃irsu’.
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.