Position in chronology
Cuneiform Akkadian clay tablet 2
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform Akkadian clay tablet 2.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_Akkadian_clay_tablet_2.jpg. Description: Small clay tablet with cuneiform writing on both sides (in Akkadian language), from Early Old Babylonian period. It displays an account of labor, specifically referring to numbers of bricks carried by workers.
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Small clay tablet with cuneiform writing on both sides (in Akkadian language), from Early Old Babylonian period. It displays an account of labor, specifically referring to numbers of bricks carried by
Attribution
Image: Original author unknown. Translation help provided by Manuel Molina. — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform Akkadian clay tablet 2.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_Akkadian_clay_tablet_2.jpg. Description: Small clay tablet with cuneiform writing on both sides (in Akkadian language), from Early Old Babylonian period. It displays an account of labor, specifically referring to numbers of bricks carried by workers..
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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.