Position in chronology
Semitic Babylonian contract-tablet
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Semitic Babylonian contract-tablet.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASemitic_Babylonian_contract-tablet.jpg. Description: Semitic Babylonian Contract-tablet. Inscribed in the reign of Hammurabi with a deed recording the division of property. The actual tablet is on the right; that which appears to be another and larger tablet on the left is the hollow clay cas
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Semitic Babylonian Contract-tablet. Inscribed in the reign of Hammurabi with a deed recording the division of property. The actual tablet is on the right; that which appears to be another and larger t
Attribution
Image: Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co. — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Semitic Babylonian contract-tablet.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASemitic_Babylonian_contract-tablet.jpg. Description: Semitic Babylonian Contract-tablet. Inscribed in the reign of Hammurabi with a deed recording the division of property. The actual tablet is on the right; that which appears to be another and larger tablet on the left is the hollow clay cas.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.