Position in chronology
RA 009, 046 SE 2
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 P127403)
Transliteration
1(disz) udu 1(disz) u8 1(disz) masz2-gal 1(disz) masz2 ga ba-usz2 u4 1(u) 2(disz)-kam sza3 tum-ma-al ki en-dingir-mu-ta ur-nigar szu ba-ti iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu amar-suen lugal
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — RA 009, 046 SE 2. 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: Couvent Saint-Etienne, Jerusalem (P127403) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P127403..
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.