2005 年 40 巻 p. 3-30
I examined the royal inscriptions of Lugalzagesi and Sargon on two subjects: 1) geographical views of the world as they appeared in the inscriptions, 2) phraseology of the inscriptions.
Lugalzagesi's inscription described geographical areas in three ways: the region from the sunrise to the sunset, the region from the lower sea to the upper sea, and regions described with a pair of the terms, kalam and kur. The first and the second views were based on people's commonsense. The third one was derived from political thought. It developed as the concept of the political sphere of influence shifted from the city-state to the regional state. This political concept had a strong influence on Mesopotamian kings until the first halfofthe second millennium B.C.
Royal inscriptions were not records of events simply written down as they occurred. To understand how the contents of royal inscriptions related to historical facts, we need to consider the phraseology used and their overall structure.
