Position in chronology
Old Babylonian baked clay cylinder. The Akkadian cuneiform inscription mentions a capacity table. 18th-16th century BCE. From Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Old Babylonian baked clay cylinder. The Akkadian cuneiform inscription mentions a capacity table. 18th-16th century BCE. From Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOld_Babylonian_baked_clay_cylinder._The_Akkadian_cuneiform_inscription_mentions_a_capacity_table._18th-16th_century_BCE._From_Iraq._Vorderasiatisches_Museum%2C_Berlin.jpg. Description: Old Babylonian baked clay cylinder. The Akkadian cuneiform inscription mentions a capacity table. 18th-16th century BCE. From Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Old Babylonian baked clay cylinder. The Akkadian cuneiform inscription mentions a capacity table. 18th-16th century BCE. From Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.
Attribution
Image: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Old Babylonian baked clay cylinder. The Akkadian cuneiform inscription mentions a capacity table. 18th-16th century BCE. From Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOld_Babylonian_baked_clay_cylinder._The_Akkadian_cuneiform_inscription_mentions_a_capacity_table._18th-16th_century_BCE._From_Iraq._Vorderasiatisches_Museum%2C_Berlin.jpg. Description: Old Babylonian baked clay cylinder. The Akkadian cuneiform inscription mentions a capacity table. 18th-16th century BCE. From Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin..
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.