Position in chronology
CDLJ 2007/1 §3.27
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 P368380)
Transliteration
2(disz)#? gu4 u2# 2(u) udu# u2# szu-gid2# e2#-muhaldim# mu aga3#-us2# kin#-gi4-a gi4-a-ne-sze3 u4 9(disz)-kam# ki# ur#-ku3#-nun#-na#-ta# ba-zi iti sze#-sag11#-ku5 mu szu-suen lugal# uri5#-ma#-ke4# ma2#-gur8#-mah# en#-lil2# nin#-lil2#-ra [mu]-ne#-dim2#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLJ 2007/1 §3.27. 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: Kalamazoo Valley Museum, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA (P368380) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P368380..
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.