Regarding the A-bar-gi, the Mes-kalam-kug Seal
and the Ur-Nanshe 'family plaque'
The Mes-kalam-dug seal/
Wow! Excellent mein freund, you`ve managed to find a picture of the white shell cylinder seal bearing the Mes-kalam-dug inscription! Wonderful
I have Woolley`s book here, as well as Gadd`s
History and Monuments of Ur as well as the 1998
Treasures of the Royal Tombs of Ur.. and not a damn one pictures the thing! So thats what it looks like hm.. We can compare the inception easily with that pictured on the Mes-kalam-dug bowl (reply 2).
A-bar-gi/
A-bar-gi, who Woolley took to be a king because of the contents of his tomb, may in fact not have been a king after all. As the book you review suggests Sheshki, the cylinder seal may "probably belonged to one of the sacrificed court of Queen Puabi (Shub-ad)". This is another interpretation.. I have recently read through the entry for this seal in that book Treasures from the Royal tombs of Ur (1998) and a good perspective is offered which I type below:
"Woolley reported that this double-register banquet scene was found against the end of the "wardrobe box," in the fill above the floor.... both male and female participants are depicted, and there is no musical performance. A personal name read in Sumerian as A-bara2-ge is inscribed in three vertically arranged cuneiform signs to the side of the scene in the upper register. When attempting to identify the occupants of the royal burials, Woolley conjectured that this cylinder belonged to the husband of Queen Puabi, a king buried in the contiguous PG 789. Other scholars have not accepted Woolley`s hypothesis, arguing that the name Abarage is neither certainly male nor certainly royal. Moorey believes that this example could have belonged to one of her ladies-in-waiting."
Ur-Nanshe Family Plaque/
(Museum number AO 2344)
This plaque, which we have seen above and which is given the museum number AO 2344 , is sometimes referred to as the "Ur-Nanshe Family Plaque" for the reason (as Sheshki observed) that the top register (and actually the below register as well) contain not only Ur-Nanshe, but his sons as well. Last weekend I searched from a comment on the plaque that I remember N. Postgate making in his book "Early Mesopotamia..." however, to my great surprise, I found that book was signed out at my library! I have seen a book at the ANE section signed out unless by myself (so great is the interest in the subject at my hometown..0_0)
In any case since the book was signed out, I resorted to searching for a good comment on the plaque on JSTOR, which proved strangely unfruitful for some time. Finally, I came across an article 'Narration in Babylonian Art' by Anne Perkins, her comment reads:
"A common type of monument from the second half of the Early Dynastic period is a relief-decorated stone plaque with a central hole, probably originally hung on the wall of a temple. The majority of these have a non-narrative design, the most common a symposium; but our fig. 7 [AO 2344] is an exception, since its accompanying inscription permits positive identification of the persons depicted and the event which the monument commemorates. This is Ur-Nanshe, ruler of the city-state of Lagash around the middle of the third millennium, and the plaque records his building of a temple for the city god, Ningirsu. Formally the familiar registration system is employed, but here unprecedentedly, the registers are broken to permit a very considerable enlargement of the figure of Ur-Nanshe. The first scene is in the upper register, with the ruler carrying on his head the first basket of bricks for the temple (the Sumerian equivalent of laying the corner-stone), accompanied by five of his children, all named, and by his cup-bearer. In the lower register Ur-Nanshe
with cup-bearer and four more of his children drinks in celebration of the completion of the temple. This is then the "episodic method," like the Standard but much more compressed, the first and last scenes in the story being assumed to convey the whole idea."
*****UPDATE: Aug. 18*****
In addition to the above, have recently surfed across the CDLI entry for AO 2349. They provide both a picture and the
transliteration which is awesome: see entry
p222359I have pasted the transliteration of this family plaque below, which includes the names of all Ur-Nanshe's sons:
1. ur-{d}nansze
2. lugal lagasz
3. dumu gu-|NI.DU|
4. dumu gur-sar
5. e2 {d}nin-gir2-su
6. mu-du3
7. abzu-banda3{da}
8. mu-du3
9. e2 {d}nansze
10. mu-du3
@surface Text 2
1. ur-{d}nansze
2. lugal
3. lagasz
4. ma2 dilmun
5. kur-ta
6. gun2 gesz mu-gal2
@surface Captions
@column 1
1. a2-ni-ta
@column 2
1. AB2?-da dumu
2. a-kur-gal dumu
3. lugal-ezem dumu
4. a2-ni-kur-ra dumu
5. mu-kur-MUSZ3-ta dumu
@column 3
1. sag dingir tuku
@column 2
1. ba#-LUL <musz>-lah5-<gal>
2. a-nun-pa3 dumu
3. men-u4-su13 dumu
4. ad-da-TUR dumu
I have Woolley`s book here, as well as Gadd`s History and Monuments of Ur as well as the 1998 Treasures of the Royal Tombs of Ur.. and not a damn one pictures the thing! So thats what it looks like hm.. We can compare the inception easily with that pictured on the Mes-kalam-dug bowl (reply 2).