Position in chronology
SAA 07 036. Possible List of Debts (ADD 0821)
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (ii 1) 6 minas of s[ilver ...], (ii 2) of Bel-[...] (ii 3) 23 hom[ers ...] (ii 4) in ...[...] (ii 5) eponym year of [...] (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/P335665/
Why it matters
Transliteration
⸢06?⸣ MA.NA KUG*.[x x x x x x] / ša mEN—⸢x⸣+[x x x x x x] / 23* ⸢ANŠE*⸣ [x x x x x x] / ina! bi?-[x x x x x x] / ⸢lim?-mu?⸣ [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 P335665.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P335665). 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/P335665/.
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.