Position in chronology
Cuneiform tablet, legal document concerning a trial, Sumer, modern Iraq, c. 2037-2029 BC - Spurlock Museum, UIUC - DSC05943
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued and photographed, but no English translation is stored in this record yet. Our translation engine works through the untranslated corpus every night, oldest first — this page will update the day its turn comes. If you are a specialist and can read it, we would love your help.
The world it comes from
Hammurabi, the Epic of Gilgamesh, mathematics.
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Exhibit in the Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. This work is old enough so that it is in the public domain. CDLI: https://cdli.earth/artif
Attribution
Image: Daderot — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet, legal document concerning a trial, Sumer, modern Iraq, c. 2037-2029 BC - Spurlock Museum, UIUC - DSC05943.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet%2C_legal_document_concerning_a_trial%2C_Sumer%2C_modern_Iraq%2C_c._2037-2029_BC_-_Spurlock_Museum%2C_UIUC_-_DSC05943.jpg. Description: Exhibit in the Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. This work is old enough so that it is in the public domain. CDLI: https://cdli.earth/artifacts/200731.
Related tablets
Related sources
An early surviving historical monument that joins named rulers, a territorial dispute and religious oaths. It shows how a city-state turned victory into a lasting public claim, without establishing that this was the first recorded conflict.
Among the oldest surviving written law collections. It provides an early witness to royal justice and specified compensation, rather than a starting date for law itself.
A major surviving ancient law collection, carved on a basalt stela over two meters tall. Royal authority and legal decisions become a monument; this is not a code in the modern sense.