Position in chronology
UCP 09-02-1, 004
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 P135908)
Transliteration
1(disz) udu niga 1(disz) udu niga gu4-e-us2-sa gu-la u4 <... ki> utu ba-a-ak-a 1(disz) udu niga gu4-e-us2-sa ka2 ge6-par4 u4 en-ne2 ki du-du-sze3 i3#-ta-e3-a [u4 ...] 1(u) 2(disz)-kam [giri3 EN].ZU#-a-bu-szu# SILA3#.SZU#.GABA# [u4 ...] 5(disz)-kam BI? ki [szul]-gi-i3-li2-ta ba-zi iti ezem-me-ki-gal2 mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 e2 szara2 umma-ka mu-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — UCP 09-02-1, 004. 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: Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA (P135908) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P135908..
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.