Position in chronology
OB Legal 082
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P258993.
Transliteration
_3(disz) gin2 ku3-babbar_ ku-nu-uk a-ha-nir-szi _sza3 la2-ia3 ma-da_ ba-ab-bi-li nam-ha-ar-ti iszkur-na-s,i-ir _[iti ... u4 n-kam]_ _[mu_ ...] ia#-di#-ha#-bu#-um# u3# mu-ti#-[...] szita2 husz-a-na gesz-hasz in-ne-ak#-[a]_ [...] dumu utu-na-s,i-[ir] ARAD na-bi-um
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC)) — OB Legal 082. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P258993) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P258993..
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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The earliest historical document in human history.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.