Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 187, Bod A 27
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.
Transliteration
1(disz) gu2# 2(u) ma-na siki# tug2 4(asz) gu2 siki tug2 nig2-lam2 3(disz)-kam us2 gu3-si ki-nu-nir-ta ki lu2-USZ-gi-na-ta ad-da szu ba-ti giri3 lu2-gu-la iti# diri sze-sag11-ku5 mu# e2 szara2 ba-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 187, Bod A 27. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P248985) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P248985..
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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.