Table with a Lion's Head and Bilingual Inscription
Unknown · Awan dynasty, reign of Puzur-Inshushinak, c. 2120-2100 BC
A thick slab of limestone, about eighty-five centimetres deep, is carved at one end with the head of a lion, its muzzle and mane worked in the round so that the animal seems to emerge from the block. The flat upper surface and the sides carry an inscription written twice, once in Akkadian cuneiform and once in Linear Elamite, the native script of Susa. Because the two versions were meant to say the same thing, this table has been one of the keys used in the modern attempt to decipher Linear Elamite. Walk around it to compare the wedge-shaped cuneiform signs with the geometric strokes of the Elamite script.
The object is a temple furnishing from the reign of Puzur-Inshushinak, the ruler who freed Susa from the Akkadian empire around 2100 before our era and who set up bilingual monuments across the acropolis, including the seated statue of the goddess Narundi displayed nearby. A table of this kind would have held offerings in a sanctuary. It was found on the acropolis of Susa by the French mission led by Jacques de Morgan and came to the Louvre under the excavation partage.
Did You Know? Puzur-Inshushinak's bilingual monuments gave scholars the closest thing to a Rosetta Stone for Linear Elamite.
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