Position in chronology
ASJ 14, 101 5
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 P102525)
Transliteration
1(u) 1(barig) 4(ban2) sze gur sze hi-ba-ri2-tum 2(u) 5(asz) sze gur sze SIG7-gibil e2-ur3-ra-ka si-ga 1(u) sze gur sze hi-ba-ri2-tum 5(asz) gur sze SIG7-gibil lu2-dingir-ra szunigin 5(u) 1(barig) 4(ban2) sze gur iti dumu-zi mu ma2 en-ki ba-ab-du8
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — ASJ 14, 101 5. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P102525) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P102525..
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.