Position in chronology
British Museum Cuneiform planisphere K8538
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:British Museum Cuneiform planisphere K8538.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABritish_Museum_Cuneiform_planisphere_K8538.jpg. Description: Part of a circular clay tablet with depictions of constellations (planisphere); the reverse is uninscribed; restored from fragments and incomplete; partly accidentally vitrified in antiquity during the destruction of the place where it was
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Part of a circular clay tablet with depictions of constellations (planisphere); the reverse is uninscribed; restored from fragments and incomplete; partly accidentally vitrified in antiquity during th
Attribution
Image: BabelStone ( Own work ) — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:British Museum Cuneiform planisphere K8538.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABritish_Museum_Cuneiform_planisphere_K8538.jpg. Description: Part of a circular clay tablet with depictions of constellations (planisphere); the reverse is uninscribed; restored from fragments and incomplete; partly accidentally vitrified in antiquity during the destruction of the place where it was.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.