Position in chronology
Ontario 2, 184
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 P209848)
Transliteration
4(barig) 5(ban2) 8(disz) sila3 ninda saga gur 2(gesz2) 4(u) 2(asz) 3(ban2) 1(disz) sila3 ninda du gur 4(asz) 1(barig) 1(ban2) 7(disz) sila3 ninda szu gu gur szagina ensi2 3(asz) 3(barig) 2(ban2) ninda du gur nu-banda3 u4 2(disz)-kam ki a2 u4-da giri3 er3-szara2 kiszib3 hu-wa-wa mu us2-sa szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 bad3 mar-tu mu-du3 lu2-eb-gal dub-sar dumu ur-ge6-par4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Ontario 2, 184. 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 (P209848) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P209848..
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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.