Position in chronology
CDLJ 2015/3 §2.32
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 P404811)
Transliteration
6(disz) szudulx(|URxMIN|) kusz si-ga 6(disz) ad-tab kusz si-ga ki-la2-bi 3(disz) ma-na 2(disz) usan3 gu2-ba 1(disz) sag-kesz2 1(disz) nag gu4 diri szu-du7-a ki a-kal-la aszgab-ta kiszib3 da-a-gi4 iti szu-numun mu szu-suen# lugal da-a-gi dub-sar ()
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLJ 2015/3 §2.32. 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: Oriental Museum, University of Durham, Durham, UK (P404811) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P404811..
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.