Position in chronology
RIAA 053
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P216416.
Transliteration
1(u@c) sze# gur# [x] masz? [x] 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) sze gur# masz-da3#? 3(asz@c) gesz#-kin-ti [n] lugal#-a2 munu4-mu2 3(asz@c) 3(disz)? KAK 2(asz@c) ganun-mah 1(asz@c) lu2-kisal [...] 1(barig@c) 1(ban2@c) sag-dingir-tuku 5(asz@c) bahar3 gesz-sza3-ki-du10 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) ganun-mah sanga iti 8(disz@t) 4(disz@t) mu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — RIAA 053. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium (P216416) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P216416..
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.