Position in chronology
Cuneiform tablet- record of receipt of unspun linen, Ebabbar archive MET ME07 154 1A
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet- record of receipt of unspun linen, Ebabbar archive MET ME07 154 1A.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet-_record_of_receipt_of_unspun_linen%2C_Ebabbar_archive_MET_ME07_154_1A.jpg. Description: Achaemenid; Cuneiform tablet; Clay-Tablets-Inscribed
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Achaemenid; Cuneiform tablet; Clay-Tablets-Inscribed
Attribution
Image: This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art . See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet- record of receipt of unspun linen, Ebabbar archive MET ME07 154 1A.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet-_record_of_receipt_of_unspun_linen%2C_Ebabbar_archive_MET_ME07_154_1A.jpg. Description: Achaemenid; Cuneiform tablet; Clay-Tablets-Inscribed.
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.