Position in chronology
CDLB 2010/001 2
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 P393062)
Transliteration
1(disz) udu szimaszgi gesz-du3 u2 ri-ba-ga-da sza3 mu-kux(DU)-ra-ta u4 2(u) 3(disz)-kam ki in-ta-e3-a-ta ba-zi giri3 nu-ur2-suen dub-sar iti ezem-szu-suen mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul 1(disz) udu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLB 2010/001 2. 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: private: Hulin, Linda, Oxford, UK (P393062) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P393062..
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.