Position in chronology
CDLJ 2002/1 §08
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 P212348)
Transliteration
[n ma]-na# ku3#-babbar# []nanna [n] ma-na ku3-babbar nin-gal-e2-nun-na a-ru-a lugal ki lu2-dingir-ra-ta ba-zi sza3 uri5-ma iti a2-ki-ti mu bi2-tum-[ra]-bi2#-um i3-[ab-ru] ma-da-[bi u3] hu#-uh2-[nu-ri ba-hul] [n] ma#-na
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLJ 2002/1 §08. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: California Museum of Ancient Art, Los Angeles, California, USA (P212348) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P212348..
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.