One of the considered discoverers of the Sumerian civilization is the French archaeologist Ernest Choquin Sarzec. He became interested in archeology when he was vice-consul in the city of Basra in 1872, thanks to the excavations that the British Taylor was carrying out in ancient Ur.
By 1877, he began the excavation of the site of Ngirsu (current Tel Telloh), in southern Iraq, on his own, which would last until 1900. His findings contributed greatly to the knowledge of Sumerian art, history and language. /p>
Among those finds was a series of 11 statuettes depicting Gudea, an ensi (ruler) of the state of Lagash, who ruled between the years 2144 and 2124 BC. Another 16 similar figurines have been appearing since the 1920s, either in clandestine excavations or in the antiquities trade.
Some are made of alabaster and others of the exotic and expensive diorite. There are different sizes, from the smallest that measures about 18 centimeters in height to the tallest that reaches 1 meter and 57 centimeters.
In general, the oldest ones are smaller. They represent Gudea standing or sitting, and were used in temples to make offerings. That is why most of the sculptures have an inscribed dedication explaining to which god they were offered.
But one of these 27 sculptures, collectively known as Gudea statues It is special and different from the others. It is not completely preserved because its head is missing, but even so its importance is great.
It is called Statue B (the 27 statues are identified with the letters of the English alphabet, from A to Z plus a last one called AA), which is preserved in the Louvre museum. It is also known as the statue of the architect with the blueprint .
It depicts the ruler or prince Gudea as the architect of the temple dedicated to the chief god of the Lagash pantheon, Ningirsu. It has a height of 93 centimeters, and is one of those found by Sarzec in 1881. It dates from between 2350 and 2000 BC. Gudea is seated and dressed in a long fringed-edged cape.
And the most interesting and special thing:on his knees he carries a table with the plan of the temple, under which there is a stiletto and a graduated ruler, as well as an inscription that covers practically the entire space.
The plan is shown in orthogonal projection and probably represents the outer wall of the sanctuary or temple. It follows the conventions of Mesopotamian clay and brick architecture:a thick wall reinforced with exterior buttresses, pierced by fortified gates with redans, and flanked by towers. The walls surround an elongated and irregular space, devoid of buildings. On the short sides and on the outer wall, small structures are placed in the gaps. The graduated ruler measures 269 millimeters. It is damaged, but 16 sections of 0.0168 meters can be distinguished, each with graduations from one to six separated by empty spaces.
Since the statue was located inside the Ningirsu temple and represented Gudea with the plan of the temple itself, it was, curiously, a temple within a statue within a temple. But what is really remarkable is that the ruler and the plane could be used by researchers, among other methods, to reconstruct Akkadian-Sumerian metrology, that is, the measurement system used in ancient Mesopotamia.
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Metrology and Mathmatics in Ancient Mesopotamia (Jack M.Sasson,ed.) / Louvre Museum / “No Sound Comes from their Throats”:The Inscription on Statue B of Gudea, Ruler of Lagash / On Art in the Ancient Near East Volume II :From the Third Millennium BCE (Irene Winter) / Wikipedia.