2 Translated Neo-Sumerian Clay Foundation Cones

Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, Sumer, city of Lagash, Neo-Sumerian Period, reign of Gudea of Lagash, ca. 2144 to 2124 BCE. A lovely pair of hand-built clay foundation cones of conical forms bearing tapered points and discoid heads. Each cone bears 12 columns of inscribed cuneiform script that is formed by impressing a sharpened reed or stick into the still-wet clay just prior to being placed inside of a kiln. Clay nails like this are also referred to as dedication pegs or funerary pegs; they were inscribed, baked, and stuck into walls made of mud bricks to mark ownership either by a god or a ruler. These dedications sometimes include stories or boasts about the rulers they describe and are some of our earliest sources of written royal history. When translated these cones read, "For Ningirsu, the mighty warrior of Enlil, Gudea, governor of Lagash, who built the Eninnu (temple) of Ningirsu, (also) built his Epa, the temple of seven sectors." Size of each (both are relatively similar): 5.05" L x 2.08" W (12.8 cm x 5.3 cm)

Cuneiform script is one of the oldest known writing systems in the world, made using a reed as a stylus and scratching wedge-shaped marks onto clay tablets. Early cuneiform was pictographic, but in the 3rd millennium BCE it shifted to the more abstract form you see here. These cuneiform objects are some of the roughly 2 million known from this culture; of these, between 30,000 and 100,000 have been translated. The earliest translations came in 1836 from the work of French scholar Eugene Burnouf and by the 1850s multiple scholars were able to produce similar translations, meaning the language had been deciphered.

Provenance: East Coast collection, New York Gallery, New York City, New York, USA, acquired before 2010

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#138550
Condition Report: Both pieces have heavy encrustations and earthen deposits, softening to some cuneiform characters, and abrasions and nicks to bodies and heads, otherwise intact and very good. Nice preservation to most cuneiform characters.