Position in chronology
HLC 152 (pl. 011 & 102)
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 P110027)
Transliteration
3(asz) la2 3(ban2) sze gur lugal gur zabar-ta la2-ia3 su-ga ur-ba-ba6 dumu ur-nig2-ka ki nam-mah dumu ur-gigir-ta nig2-u2-rum sagi lugal-ke4 szu ba-ti sza3 lagasz giri3 lu2-suen gu-za-la2 u3 giri3 la-lu5 mu us2-sa si-mu-ru-um lu-lu-bu a-ra2 1(u) la2 1(disz)-kam-asz ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — HLC 152 (pl. 011 & 102). No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P110027) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P110027..
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.