Position in chronology
Cuneiform Tablet, Nippur
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform Tablet, Nippur.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_Tablet%2C_Nippur.jpg. Description: Photo of Exhibit at the Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv - en:Beit Hatefutsot . The note reads: A lease of land, written in cuneiform in clay tablet, with comments in Aramaic. Nippur, Babylonia, 5th century BCE, Facsimile. The tablet was found in
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Photo of Exhibit at the Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv - en:Beit Hatefutsot . The note reads: A lease of land, written in cuneiform in clay tablet, with comments in Aramaic. Nippur, Babylonia, 5th century
Attribution
Image: Sodabottle — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform Tablet, Nippur.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_Tablet%2C_Nippur.jpg. Description: Photo of Exhibit at the Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv - en:Beit Hatefutsot . The note reads: A lease of land, written in cuneiform in clay tablet, with comments in Aramaic. Nippur, Babylonia, 5th century BCE, Facsimile. The tablet was found in.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.