A marble pillar or stele that has been kept in the British Museum for 150 years bears a cuneiform inscription, deciphered in late 2018, and which has turned out to be the first known record of a border dispute. In addition, it mentions, also for the first time, the term no man's land .
The pillar is Mesopotamian and is about 4,500 years old. Despite being in the museum for so long, it has been the curator of the Middle East department, Irving Finkel, who deciphered the inscription, made to delimit the borders between the war-torn city-states of Lagash and Umma, in the south of present-day Iraq. .
Lagash, whose capital was Girsu, was one of the oldest city-states in Sumer, located at present-day Tell al-Hiba, northwest of the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris. It had 17 large cities, eight district capitals, and at least 40 villages. Umma, located northwest of Lagash (in present-day Tell Yoja), also controlled the cities of Ur and Uruk.
Both disputed a fertile area called Gu'edena (the edge of the plain ), so Entemena, king of Lagash, had the inscribed pillar erected around 2400 B.C. to claim possession of the territory.
It tells the full story of the dispute between the cities over the area, and the names of the main gods of Lagash and Umma appear, the former Ningirsu and the latter practically illegible.
The latter intentionally, as a means of making Ningirsu's power prevail over that of his rival god, something that according to experts is unique and exceptional in known cuneiform inscriptions.
But there is more, for Finkel believes that the pillar and inscription were deliberately and artificially aged in order to pass it off as a historical document and to buttress Lagash's claim to Gu'edena.
The scribe also used an archaic type of writing for the same purpose, all of which has made his decipherment and interpretation difficult until now. It would therefore also be one of the first known document falsification attempts.
The war for this reason between Lagash and Umma also led to the creation of one of the first peace treaties in history, embodied in one of the oldest known legal documents, the Treaty of Mesilim, signed around 2550 BC.
Through this treaty, the border between the two was established, demarcated with a stele placed on the irrigation channel whose use was disputed. King Mesilim of Kish acted as mediator, who inscribed his final decision on the pillar.
But the peace would not last, as Umma attacked Lagash two centuries later, completely destroying its capital Girsu. His rule would not last long either, because a few years later Sargon of Acad would conquer all the Sumerian cities, regardless of stelae or treaties.