Position in chronology
Berens 055
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 P105766)
Transliteration
3(disz) ha-zi ki-la2-bi 5(disz) 1/2(disz) ma-na 5(disz) gin2 ba-la2 ki na-ba-sa6-ta ur-szu-ga-lam-ma szu ba-ti giri3 ur-nun-gal u3 lu2-ba-gara2 mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4# [ma]-da za-ab-sza#-li mu#-hul#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Berens 055. 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: Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland (P105766) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P105766..
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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.