Cuneiform tablet with schoolwork BM 104096

~1800 BCE·Old Babylonian·BM 104096

Translation · reference

Experimental

Source: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet with schoolwork BM 104096.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet_with_schoolwork_BM_104096.jpg. Description: School tablet with proverb: on this side, the teacher's version; the pupil's copy is on the other side. Old Babylonian period, unknown provenience British Museum 104096 https://www.bmimages.com/preview.asp?image=00032432001

Why it matters

Transliteration

Scholarly note

Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: School tablet with proverb: on this side, the teacher's version; the pupil's copy is on the other side. Old Babylonian period, unknown provenience British Museum 104096 https://www.bmimages.com/previe

Attribution

Image: Zunkir — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet with schoolwork BM 104096.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet_with_schoolwork_BM_104096.jpg. Description: School tablet with proverb: on this side, the teacher's version; the pupil's copy is on the other side. Old Babylonian period, unknown provenience British Museum 104096 https://www.bmimages.com/preview.asp?image=00032432001.

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

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.

~3500 BCE

Kish Tablet

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.

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

The earliest historical document in human history.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.