Position in chronology
MVN 15, 188
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 P118468)
Transliteration
3(ban2) zi3 sig15 lugal 5(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 zi3-gu 1(ban2) nig2-ar3 esza nansze nigin6 giri3 ARAD2!-nanna sagi sza3-ge! guru7 lugal ki ur-nig2 dumu <<sa6>> lugal-lu2-sa6 iti ezem-li9-si4 mu us2-sa ma2-dara3-abzu ba-ab-du8
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — MVN 15, 188. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA (P118468) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P118468..
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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.