Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 199, Bod A 90
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(disz) sila4 giri3 a-al-la-mu 1(disz) sila4 giri3 igi-sa6-sa6 3(disz) udu giri3 a-da-lal3 ki in-ta-e3-a-ta du11-ga i3-dab5 kiszib3 ur-mes iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu szu-suen lugal ur-mes dumu la-na kuruszda
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 199, Bod A 90. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y1 — Šu-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P249018) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P249018..
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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.