Position in chronology
CDLJ 2012/1 §3.11
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 P416400)
Transliteration
1(gesz2) 1(u) 1(disz) ul la2-ia3 1(u) 9(disz) ul 2(gesz2) 3(disz) kak kusz a2-la2 ur-namma kin dab5!(TUG2)-ba kusz se-ge4-de3 a-kal-la aszgab szu ba-ti giri3 ARAD2 ka-guru7 iti ezem-szul-gi mu ku3 gu-za en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLJ 2012/1 §3.11. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, USA (P416400) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P416400..
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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.