Position in chronology
BECPL 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 P464911)
Transliteration
1(disz) masz2 ma2-gan niga ba-usz2 u4 1(u) 7(disz)-kam ki u2-ta2-mi-szar-ra-am-ta szul-gi-iri-mu szu ba-ti iti ezem-szul-gi mu sza-asz-ru ba-hul 1(disz) a-lu5-lu5 dumu inim-szara2 kuruszda szara2-ka
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — BECPL 4. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y6 — Šašru destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Buffalo, New York, USA (P464911) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P464911..
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.