Position in chronology
Cuneiform tablet - Petra
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet - Petra.JPG. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet_-_Petra.JPG. Description: Cuneiform tablet written in Harran to record a contract between two Arameans and an Edomite, Qos-Shama. 1st year of Darius, most likely Darius I. 520 BCE. . Petra Archaeological Museum
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Cuneiform tablet written in Harran to record a contract between two Arameans and an Edomite, Qos-Shama. 1st year of Darius, most likely Darius I. 520 BCE. . Petra Archaeological Museum
Attribution
Image: Chamberi — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet - Petra.JPG. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet_-_Petra.JPG. Description: Cuneiform tablet written in Harran to record a contract between two Arameans and an Edomite, Qos-Shama. 1st year of Darius, most likely Darius I. 520 BCE. . Petra Archaeological Museum.
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.