Position in chronology
Orient 55, 163 no. 9
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, 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 P424376)
Transliteration
2/3(disz) ma-na 4(disz) gin2 uruda ki lu2-kal-la-ta ugu2 gu-du-du ba-a-gar kiszib3 ur-nun-gal mu szu-suen lugal-e ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul szu-suen lugal kal-ga lugal uri5-ma lugal an-ub-da limmu2-ba ur-nun-gal dub-sar dumu ur-szara2 pisan-dub-ba-ka ARAD2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 163 no. 9. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y6 — Land of Zabšali destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: WCMA 20.1.09 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424376). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P424376..
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.