The king’s quest for eternity

In the wake of the earliest printing technology

Szilvia Sövegjártó

Every king strives for fame and immortality in one way or another. Like the generations before and after him, Naram-Suen, the ruler of the Agade dynasty (2254–2218 BCE), initiated numerous building projects and had several temples built or renovated throughout southern Mesopotamia. Traditionally, the names of the builders were recorded by hand in commemorative inscriptions on various building elements. However, Naram-Suen's many building projects required such a quantity of inscribed bricks that a new method was developed in order to inscribe as many bricks as possible in as short a time as possible.

The new method involved stamps. The stamp discussed here was unearthed in the ancient site of Nippur and is now housed in the Hilprecht Collection Jena. It was made of clay and measures c. 11.5 × 11.5 × 2.7 cm. The cuneiform signs were cut mirror-inverted into the obverse of the block (Fig. 1, left). A loop handle, also made of clay, was attached to the back of the stamp (Fig. 1, right). Traces of the loop handle are still visible. The stamp, including the handle, was hardened by firing. The inscription on the present stamp shows that the building blocks were produced in order to build the Ekur, the temple of the god Enlil, the chief god of the Sumerian pantheon in Nippur, and is written in Sumerian: ‘Naram-Suen has built it. House of Enlil.’ The stamp was applied on the soft clay of mud bricks before they were either fired or sun-dried.

Fig. 1 : The obverse of the brick stamp HS 1990 with a mirror-inverted inscription of Naram-Suen (left). The reverse of the brick stamp HS 1990 with the remains of the handle (right).

Several other brick stamps with exactly the same inscription have been preserved, and the imprint of such stamps is found in quite a number of bricks. The stamp was intended for mass production, thus avoiding the constant use – and expense – of literate workers. The stamping was most likely done by the people who produced the bricks, probably in several workshops where this ‘mass production’ was undertaken, and with several similar stamps. Because they were hand-made the stamps are slightly different in size, as are the inscriptions on each stamp.

Stamps of Naram-Suen have been found in various locations and they document the many building activities of the ruler. The inscription always provides exact information for which building the stamp was intended; these were mostly temples, occasionally city walls or palaces. Consequently, our stamp was only used in the course of a single project, namely Naram-Suen’s renovation of Enlil’s temple in the city of Nippur.

Naram-Suen was the first ruler whose name was preserved on stamped building blocks. Inscribed building blocks are known from earlier building activities but the inscriptions were written by hand and tend to be more lengthy; however, only a limited number of bricks bear such inscriptions. The new technology made it possible to commemorate the name of both the patron and the building on a much larger number of building blocks. The increase in the number of inscribed bricks was also due to the large number of Naram-Suen’s building projects, projects which represented the power of the ruling dynasty far beyond the borders of a city state. During his reign many buildings were renovated, and temple buildings underwent substantial extensions. In this way, a large number of inscribed bricks ensured the survival of the ruler’s name.

The inscription on our stamp is very short compared to most royal inscriptions, including earlier handwritten brick inscriptions. The stamp inscriptions of Naram-Suen as well as those of later rulers focus only on the ruler’s titles and the building project. The brevity is a direct result of the technological innovation: the signs inscribed in brick stamps are much larger than those in hand-written cuneiform script; furthermore, building blocks offered only a limited space for an inscription. Indeed, inscriptions on building blocks, handwritten or printed, were originally intended for a divine audience, and the inscription was not visible once the brick was placed within the building. Only in later times, during the reign of Amar-Suena (c. 2046–2037 BCE), was the same stamp applied on more than one surface of the brick. Thus, the second, inscribed, surface was visible to human visitors to the building, and the builder could be ascertained without removing a single brick from the wall.

Fig. 2: A brick stamped with an identical inscription.

Building blocks stamped with our stamp or with another brick stamp bearing the same inscription as ours have been unearthed. Such documentation of the building activities of ancient Mesopotamian rulers, whether visible on parts of the building or invisible – inside the walls or in the foundations (found in buried deposits) – was not merely symbolic in nature, it was also of practical importance. The symbolic function of inscriptions was to ensure communication between the ruler and the gods. The pragmatic function of such inscriptions was directly related to the renovation work carried out by later rulers: during such work these inscriptions became visible, and the information revealed allowed them to commemorate their ancestors in the appropriate manner, listing the earlier builders and renovators by name in the later inscriptions. In this way, they avoided the curse of their ancestors (against those who fraudulently claim the construction of the building as their own achievement) and the subsequent resentment of the gods.

The technological innovation introduced during the reign of Naram-Suen was probably inspired by the cylinder seals widely used in ancient Mesopotamia. These small cylindrical stone objects with their images and short inscriptions were rolled on clay tablets, and served a purpose similar to signatures in later times. In contrast, brick stamps were made of clay not stone; they were thus easier to produce, but their use was limited – to a relatively short period of brick production.

Our stamp as well as other brick stamps of Naram-Suen were no longer used after the building project had been finished. Nevertheless, the printing technique invented in the twenty-second century BCE, remained in use for over two thousand years. However, this technology was only used in producing bricks for important building projects and did not establish itself in the reproduction of manuscripts. Indeed, the use of such stamps in the production of a relatively small number of documents or artefacts would have been inefficient – compared with their use in stamping large numbers of bricks used in the course of building a temple. Not only was the production of stamps time-consuming, but a significant reduction of the script size would have been necessary to apply this technology to manuscripts.

Nevertheless, stamp technology afforded Naram-Suen, the ruler of the Agade dynasty, great success: his name and fame as the ruler who renovated and expanded the Ekur, the temple of Enlil in Nippur have lived on for more than four millennia. Though the original building blocks are no longer part of the temple, they are reproduced for both the scientific community and the general public in a variety of languages and on various materials (in print and in digital media) – materials which were unimaginable during the lifetime of the Mesopotamian ruler.

References

Englund, Robert K. et al., Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (accessed: 20 January 2021).
Frayne, Douglas R. (1993), Sargonic and Gutian Periods (The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Early Periods, 2), Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Finkel, Irving and Jonathan Taylor (2015), Cuneiform, London: British Museum Press.

Description

Museum / Collection: Hilprecht Collection Jena, Germany
Accession number: HS 1990
CDLI: P216560
Material: clay
Measurements: c. 11.5 × 11.5 × 2.7 cm
Provenance: Nippur (modern Nuffar)
Language: Sumerian
Period / Date: Agade Period (c. 2350–2150 BCE)

Copyright notice

Figure 1: Courtesy Prof Dr Manfred Krebernik, Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection of Babylonian Antiquities, University of Jena.

Figure 2: Image courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Near East Curator-in-Charge.

Reference note

Szilvia Sövegjártó, The king’s quest for eternity – In the wake of the earliest printing technology
In: Wiebke Beyer, Karin Becker (eds): Artefact of the Month No 10, CSMC, Hamburg,
https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/aom/010-en.html