Position in chronology
Ontario 1, 003
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 P124416)
Transliteration
4(disz) udu niga 2(disz) sila3-ta u4 1(disz)-kam iti ezem-me-ki-gal2 u4 5(disz) ba-zal mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 bad3 mar-tu mu-ri-iq-ti-id-ni-im mu-du3-ta iti u5-bi2-gu7 u4 1(u) 5(disz) ba-zal-sze3 mu us2-sa szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 bad3 mar-tu mu-ri-iq-ti-id-ni-im mu-du3-sze3 sze-bi 3(asz) 2(barig) 2(ban2) gur sza3-gal udu niga-sze3 masz2-da-re-a nin giri3 du-szu-mu-um sza3 puzur4-isz-da-gan
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Ontario 1, 003. 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: Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (P124416) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P124416..
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.