The text which forms the subject of this article is housed in the Free Library of Philadelphia. I found it there last year as a boxful of fragments which had to be put laboriously together, and I groaned when I saw them, thinking “Oh, here's another Lagaš tablet”. Indeed, it is a Lagaš tablet, but it is certainly not of any ordinary kind. I have never seen anything like it. It will be immediately apparent that the text is a list of fish offerings which the wife of Urukagina brought in Nippur to a number of deities. These deities include Inanna, perhaps Ninlil, and Šara.

Šara, the city god of Umma, has for all I know nothing to do in Nippur. He had no sanctuary there. So, even though the offerings were brought in Nippur, at least those in Šara's name must have been meant for Umma.

This is so unusual in a Lagaš text that rather far-reaching explanations may be warranted. I would suggest the following synthesis of the facts:

In his third year in office, Urukagina had sensed the threatening danger, the thunderclouds that were gathering in Umma. He tried to stave off the impending catastrophe by diplomacy. He and his wife embarked on a goodwill mission by donating sacrifices to the principal gods of Umma and Nippur. The offerings were made in Nippur because Enlil, the chief god of that city, held the key to the kingship of all Sumer and had bestowed it on Lugalzagesi, the ambitious ensi of Umma. The offerings may even have been brought on the occasion of Lugalzagesi's coronation in Nippur.