• Object type: Document
• Formal Title: Cone of Enmetena, King of Lagash
• Creator: unknown
• Date Created: 2400 BC
• Origin: Telloh (ancient Girsu), Lower Mesopotamia (now in Iraq)
• Current Location: The Louvre Museum, Paris, France

The 2600-2550 (date uncertain) peace treaty set by an arbitrator, King Mesilim, between the two warring city-states of Lagash and Umma, is the top candidate for title of the world's oldest legal document, and certainly the oldest treaty.

The treaty itself has not survived but a record of it has on the Cone of Entemena, which has been dated to 2400 BC, some 150 years later.

The official description offered by the Louvre Museum in Paris, which owns the priceless piece of legal history:

"The text recounts the history of the borders drawn between the Sumerian states of Lagash and Umma (Lower Mesopotamia). The archivist of Enmetena (2404-2375 BC), prince of Lagash, relates the history of the contention from its beginning at the time when Mesalim, king of Kish, ruled over all Sumeria. The people of Umma did not keep the alliance treaty. Enmetena settled the difference and rebuilt the ditch....

"The writings of the princes of the Lagash Dynasty provide information on the events of a time when the city-states, governed by a hereditary prince and a delegate of the local supreme god, fought over border problems and strove to impose their sway over the neighboring city. The most famous example is the Stele of the Vultures" which Eanatum, Enmetena's grandfather, raised to commemorate his victory over the rival city of Umma.

"The originality of Enmetena's cone lies in the fact that the king's archivist took a historian's approach to the contention between the two cities, due to a problem over a border embankment or ditch claimed by both states, telling the story from the beginning at the time (c. 2600 BC) when Mesalim, king of Kish ruled over the whole of Sumeria. The people of Umma had ignored the alliance treaty about the ditch for three generations; it was Enmetena who settled the dispute and had the ditch (or embankment) rebuilt, pleading his case before Enlil, the great god of Sumeria, to establish his right. The text ends with curses on "the man from Umma" who "would dare cross the border-embankment."

Excerpt from the text:

"Enlil, king of all countries and father of all gods marked out the border in firm terms.... Mesalim, the king of Kish, measured it with the surveying chain, (and) erected a stele there.... In vain, Enmetena, the prince of Lagash, sent messages to Ila about this embankment. Ila, the prince of Umma, who is a land thief and a vituperator, declared: "The border-embankment is mine."

The Peace Treaty of Mesilim is also featured in the Duhaime's Timetable of World Legal History.

 

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