Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/2, pl. 125, 1971-270
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.
Transliteration
2(asz) 2(barig) ziz2 gur sa2-du11 szara2 kiszib3 lugal-nig2-lagar-e 2(asz) ziz2 gur mu-sza kiszib3 lu2-bala-saga 1(barig) ziz2 kiszib3 gu-du-du 1(barig) ziz2 kiszib3 e2-gal-e-si szunigin 4(asz) 4(barig) ziz2 gur e2-kikken sumun-ta iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu us2-sa szu-suen lugal-e bad3 mar-tu mu-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/2, pl. 125, 1971-270. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y2 — Year after: Šu-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P248785) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P248785..
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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.