Position in chronology
CDLJ 2015/3 §2.25
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 P361740)
Transliteration
5(asz) 3(barig)#? 5(ban2)#? ziz2# gur# lugal# 3(u) 2(asz) 4(barig)#? 1(ban2)# [...] gig# gur# lugal# ki lu2-igi-ma#-sze3#-ta# kiszib3 ur-lamma dumu ur#-[ba-ba6] i3-dub a-sza3 ar#?-[sza?-ti?]-a#?-nin-[dar?-a?-ta?] iti ezem-szul-gi mu si-mu#-ur4#-[um u3] lu-lu-bu-um a#-[ra2] 1(u) la2 1(disz@t)#-kam-asz# ba#-hul#-[a?] ur-lamma dub-sar dumu ur-ba-ba6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLJ 2015/3 §2.25. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Museum, University of Durham, Durham, UK (P361740) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P361740..
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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.