Position in chronology
Akkadica 135/1, 098-100 13
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, 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
5(bur3) GAN2 gesz-ur3-ra a-ra2 1(disz) 4(iku) 1/2(iku) GAN2-ta a2 erin2-na-bi u4 1(gesz2) a-sza3 nin-ur4-ra ugula ur#-am3-ma kiszib3 szesz-a-ni mu szu-suen lugal-e na-ru2-a mah en-lil2 nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-du3 szesz-a-ni dub-sar dumu da-da
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Akkadica 135/1, 098-100 13. 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: DMMA AA.TC.70 (Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P480077). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P480077..
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.