Position in chronology
SDSU 4
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 P249257)
Transliteration
6(disz) pisan im-sar-ra a2 na-da u4 1(u) 4(disz) pisan im-sar-ra a2 u4 2(disz)-ta [...] x gesz da [...] x ki a-gu-ta kiszib3 hu-wa-wa sza3 bala-a mu szu-suen lugal lu2-eb-gal dub-sar dumu ur-ge6-par4 gudu4 inanna
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — SDSU 4. 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: H. M. Briggs Library, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota, USA (P249257) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P249257..
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.