A New Edition of the Lagaš II Royal Inscriptions including Gudea's Cylinders

• Published in: Journal of cuneiform studies 1998-01, Vol.50 (1), p.67-75
• Main Author: Suter, Claudia E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ancient civilizations of the near east; Art and archaeology; Bibliographic literature; Bibliographies; Bricks; Cylinders; Deities; Figurines; Inscriptions; Mesopotamia and Near East; Philology; Sculpture; Statues; Stelae; Sumer; Sumer. Akkad and surrounding countries; Writing tablets
• ISSN: 0022-0256; 2325-6737
• DOI: 10.2307/1360034

The effort spent on dedicatory objects, however, could have been spared and replaced with a reference to Eva Braun-Holzinger, who personally handled many of these objects. Since her study is an essential reference tool for art historians,9 and updates Steible concerning the identification and description of a number of objects ignored by the author, a concordance is furnished here in an Appendix. [...]the present volume does not unnecessarily repeat work published only six years earlier, and this allowed the author to focus his attention on the translations, in particular on the Gudea cylinders Considering myself more an art historian than a philologist, I will restrict my comments to points of general understanding rather than to philological details, The primary contribution of this volume no doubt lies in the translations. [...]they are smooth, elegant, and resourceful. The reader may be surprised at the author's preference for the reading nig-du7 pa-e, "making things function as they should" rather than nig-ul pa-e,14 "making appear an everlasting thing" in the sense of creating, based on the botanical metaphor of the apparition of leaves and branches (pa).