(Texts: All Artifacts, Color Coding, & Writings in Bold Type With Italics Inside Parenthesis, are Added by Editor R. Brown, not the Authors, Translators, or Publishers!)
(gods in blue …mixed-breed demigods in teal…)
CHOSEN BY ENLIL,
MIGHTY HERO,
THE TEMPLE OF ENLIL,
BRICK STAMP INSCRIPTION
MS in Neo Sumerian on white marble, Sumer, 2046-2038 BC, 1 brick printing block, 18,5×10,0x3,5 cm, single column, 7 lines in cuneiform script, with a handle on the back.
Context: Bricks of King Amar-Sin with full texts are MSS 1878 and 1914.
Commentary: Brick printing blocks are so rare as objects that there is a theory that they were broken when a production run was finished. Those that are known are almost never intact. There are some broken ones from the Old Akkadian Period, including the intact MS 5106, but they are of terracotta. Until this one there were no examples of an UR III brick printing block known at all, and the material of their construction was a complete mystery.
The inscription is a well known one, but the last 3 lines have not been cut, apart from the first sign in line 7. This printing block was never used, but discarded by the scribe due to a slight chipping to the inscription. Since the natural medium for writing at this time, was clay, the process of impressing a block into wet soft clay can be seen as the first known example of true printing. Some of the printing blocks even had ‘movable type’ so that the inscription relating to more than one building could be accommodated with a minimum of effort.