Watch List notes:

Terra cotta cone of King Ishme-Dagan. First Dynasty of Isin, ca. 1953-1935. Clay cones or nails (cones with a flattened mushroom-shaped heads) were inscribed with dedicatory inscriptions, in many hundreds of duplicates, and embedded in the walls of a building. This text is writeen around the shaft of the cone, in two columns of equal length, with eighteen lines of Sumerian cuneiform. It is known from many duplicates.

The text records the building of the wall of Isin by King Ishme-Dagan, after exempting the citizens from taxes and freeing them from corvee labor. For the translation of the wall's name, see A.R. George in Bibliotheca Orientalis 53 (1996), p. 366, and Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions and Related Texts in the Schoyen Collection (2011), p. 91, no. 39. Ancient Isin is the modern site Tell Bahriayat, located on an ancient course of the Euphrates River in central Babylonia. The site has beeen excavated by German archaeologists, with numerous publications.

diš-me-dda-gan
nita-kala-ga
lugal-i3-si-in-na
lugal-an-ub-da-limmu-ba-ke4
u4 nibru-ki
uru-ki-ag2-
den-lil2-la2
gu2-bi
mu-un-du8
eren2-bi kaskal-ta
ba-ra-an-zi-ga-a
bad3-gal-
i3-si-in-ki-na
mu-un-du3
bad3-ba
diš-me-dda-gan
den-lil2-da / a2-an-gal
mu-bi-im

Ishme-Dagan,
mighty man,
king of Isin,
king of the Four Quarters (of the world),
when Nippur,
the beloved city
of Enlil
its taxes
he cancelled, (and)
its men from military/corvee service
he excused (removed),
the great wall
of Isin
he built,
of that wall
"Ishme-Dagan,
with Enlil, the might of(?) the great god"
is its name.

Ishme-Dagan, mighty man, king of Isin, king of the Four Quarters (of the world)when he cancelled the taxes of Nippur, the city beloved by Enlil, and excused its men from military/corvee service, he built the city wall of Isin, naming it "Ishme-Dagan, with Enlil, the might of(?) the great god."

Minor chips, otherwise well-preserved. Length: 14.6cm.

From the Dr. Stephen Gerson Collection, purchased in London, 1991.