Position in chronology
BiMes 19, 191, 250 9-02958
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P248449.
Transliteration
_7(asz) gur sze_ _e2-dub_ masz-kan2 x x x# _nig2 szu_ mu-na-nu-um _szu ti-a_ dingir-szu-na-s,ir# [nam]-ha-ar-ti [...] x# x# x#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC)) — BiMes 19, 191, 250 9-02958. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA (P248449) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P248449..
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.