Position in chronology
Hermitage 3, 488
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 P211698)
Transliteration
pisan-dub-ba kiszib3# dab-ba# da-ga-x [x]-ku3-ge dumu a-ab-ba-ni u3 lugal-ku3-zu nu-banda3 kiszib3 zi-re u3 kiszib3-kiszib3-sze3 tum3 ur-szul-pa-e3 kiszib3-kiszib3-sze3 tum3 dam-gar3-ne kiszib3 tug2 szara2 kar-ra ensi2-ka kiszib3 tug2 kusz x inanna bi2-za-ka a x x kiszib3 ur-x sza13-dub-ba u3 ur-nun-gal x x x a-pi4-sal4 musz-bi-an-na mu szu-suen lugal x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Hermitage 3, 488. 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: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P211698) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P211698..
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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.