Table of Contents
In a British Museum talk, curator Sebastien Rey shows Matt a cuneiform tablet that is the ground plan of a lost sanctuary, not a sketch of a hill. Marks along the lower edge are a broken measuring rod. A near life-size statue of King Gudea, ruler of the Sumerian city of Girsu late in the third millennium BC, once held that plan on his lap. The text says the god Ningirsu gave him the sacred measures in a dream and ordered a new temple. Older French digs hunted the building for decades and treated the drawing as myth. New trenches at Tello, ancient Girsu, let the team scale the plan from a second statue whose ruler is whole, splitting one length into halves and thirds. On the mound the scale matched the walls, and a later small trench hit the stretch they expected. Rey calls the carving the earliest architectural drawing yet identified, laid out in the old base-60 way of counting, under a charge to keep the world in order.
Key points
- The tablet is a temple plan, and the marks beneath it are a broken measuring rod.
- Gudea of Girsu is shown receiving Ningirsu’s measures in a dream.
- Older excavations treated the plan as symbolic and did not match it to standing walls.
- A second statue with a full ruler let the team recover the unit and the fractions.
- Overlaying that scale on new trenches at Tello produced a match, including a predicted wall.
- Rey calls the carving the earliest known architectural plan, tied to keeping cosmic order.
Short quotes
So he ruled an ancient Sumerian city called Girsu at the end of the third millennium BC.
Sébastien Rey, Girsu temple plan at the British Museum
Rey identifies the statue as Gudea, king of Girsu. Watch at 3:23
So these are just subdividing the same length into different amounts.
Matt, Girsu temple plan at the British Museum
Matt reads the complete ruler as a set of fractions of one unit. Watch at 6:39
It makes it actually the first architectural plan known in history.
Sébastien Rey, Girsu temple plan at the British Museum
After the trench matched the drawing, Rey states the historical claim. Watch at 10:44
Whatever the case, they obviously wanted to make a mathematically pleasing building.
Matt, Girsu temple plan at the British Museum
Matt’s conclusion is that the fractions were a deliberate design, not an accident. Watch at 13:20
So the deity is called Ningirsu, so literally ‘the Lord of Girsu’.
Sébastien Rey, Girsu temple plan at the British Museum
Rey names the god who ordered the temple and gives the title’s plain sense. Watch at 15:57
Video by The British Museum. Watch on YouTube.