Position in chronology
SAA 07 019. List of Various Craftsmen (ADD 0868)
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (1) [... gold]smith (2) [... stone]-borers (3) [... st]one-carver (4) [... en]graver (5) [...] coppersmith (6) [... ar]chitect (Rest destroyed)
Source: Fales, F.M. & Postgate, J.N. 1992. Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration. SAA 7. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa07/P335709/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[x x x LÚ].⸢SIMUG⸣.KUG.GI / [x x x LÚ.GAR].U.U*-MEŠ / [x x x LÚ].⸢BUR*⸣.GUL* / [x x x LÚ].⸢KAB*⸣.SAR / [x x x LÚ].SIMUG—URUDU / [x x x LÚ].⸢še⸣-lap-a.a / [x x x x x] ⸢x⸣
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian administrative record (palace or temple), edited by F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate (SAA 7, 1992). ORACC text P335709.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P335709). source
Translation excerpted from Fales, F.M. & Postgate, J.N. 1992. Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration. SAA 7. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa07/P335709/.
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.