Position in chronology
Aleppo 175
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 P100507)
Transliteration
8(disz) gurusz u4 2(disz)-sze3 ma2-la2-a kesz2-ra2 u4 1(u) 4(disz)-sze3 ma2 gid2-da ma2 si-ga u4 2(disz)-sze3 ma2 ba-al-la ga2-nun gaba e2-lugal ga2-nun e2-te-na ma2 ib2-gid2 ugula da-du-mu giri3 lugal-iti-da mu amar-suen lugal-e ur-bi2-lum mu-hul inim-szara2 dub-sar dumu lugal-iti-da
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Aleppo 175. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y2 — Urbilum destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: National Museum of Syria, Aleppo, Syria (P100507) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P100507..
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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.