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‪For the past ten years, sensory studies have been widely developed, especially by philologists and archaeologists of the Ancient Near East. As epigraphic data and artifacts are unevenly distributed through time and space, it is possible to have only snapshots of a given time and place. The present study focuses on the construction of the temple of the god Ningirsu, in the city of Girsu (Southern Iraq), during the reign of Gudea, governor-ensi2 of the state of Lagaš around 2120 Bce. The Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions (Statue B and Cylinders A and B) left by Gudea enable us not only to explore the symbolic components of a lived experience, but also to understand how sensory phenomena were mobilized in the royal rhetoric, as rendered in writing. The aim here is to understand how the parameters of the sensory atmosphere can be manipulated for ideological purposes in the representation of the power, in a discourse linking matter, ritual and memory. Humans and non-human entities do not share the same sensible experience of space. The mythological time of the deities and the human time of the ritual intertwine owing not only to the body’s memory, based on the properties of the materials constituting the temple, but also on the expressions and metaphors inscribed forever in stone or clay. The study will explore the very context of production of these inscribed objects, fully integrated into the royal funerary cult.‪