Position in chronology
AuOr 33, 215-220
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, 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 P431427)
Transliteration
1(barig) sze lugal kiszib3 lu2-gi-na iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu us2-sa si-mu-ru-um lu-lu-bu a-ra2 1(u) la2 1(disz@t)-kam-ma-asz ba-hul lu2-gi-na dub-sar dumu lu2-ba-ba6#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AuOr 33, 215-220. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: I-A-120, 1033 (Šiauliai Aušros Museum, Šiauliai, Lithuania) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P431427). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P431427..
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.