Position in chronology
Nisaba 22, 123
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 P406487)
Transliteration
1(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 kasz 1(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 ninda 1(u) 2(disz) gin2 i3 sa2-du11 u4 3(disz)-kam ur-da-mu lu2 tukul e2 usz-bar 1(ban2) kasz 1(ban2) ninda 4(disz) gin2 i3 sa2-du11 u4 2(disz)-kam lu2-sza-lim sukkal 3(disz) sila3 kasz 2(disz) sila3 ninda 4(disz) gin2 i3 bu3-bu3-ma-am3 lu2 maszkim iti gu4-ra2-bi2-mu2-mu2 mu amar-suen lugal ur-bi2-lum mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Nisaba 22, 123. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y1 — Amar-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P406487) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P406487..
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.