Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 196, Bod A 65
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
4(ban2) zi3-sig15 [n] 7(asz)# 2(barig) 2(ban2) zi3 ISZ# ba-ba gur [n] 2(asz)# 1(barig) 2(ban2) 5(disz) 5/6(disz)# dabin gur si-i3-tum nig2-ka9 ba-na-ti su-su# mu ur-bi2-lum [...] iti# sze#-[sag11-ku5] [mu ur-bi2-lum ba-hul]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 196, Bod A 65. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P249011) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P249011..
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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.