Position in chronology
CDLJ 2002/1 §13
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration and photographed, but no published translation exists yet. Our translation engine works through the untranslated corpus every night, oldest first — this page will update the day its turn comes. If you are a specialist and can read it, we would love your help.
The world it comes from
A bureaucratic golden age, the Code of Ur-Nammu.
From the same catalogue range (near P212353)
Transliteration
[1(disz)] gu4# u2 5(disz)# udu# u2 1(u) 5(disz) masz2 gaba szu#-gid2 e2-muhaldim mu aga3-us2 u3 lu2# szuku-ra-ke4-ne#-[sze3] ARAD2-mu maszkim# [u4 n-kam] [ki ...]-x-[...-ta] [ba]-zi# giri3# nanna#-[ma-ba] dub-[sar] iti ezem#-szu-suen# mu# i-bi2-suen lugal 1(disz) gu4 [2(u)] udu#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLJ 2002/1 §13. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ibbi-Suen y1 — Ibbi-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: California Museum of Ancient Art, Los Angeles, California, USA (P212353) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P212353..
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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.