Position in chronology
SNAT 258
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, 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 P130018)
Transliteration
3(u) 4(asz) 1(ban2) ku6 gibil4 gur lugal ku6-ba geme2 usz-bar gir2-su-ka a-hu-um-be-li2 szu ba-ti 6(asz) 3(barig) 2(ban2) gur geme2 usz-bar nin-dingir-ba-ba6 ki la-a-ta geme2 usz-bar-re szu ba-ab-ti iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu hu-uh2-nu-ri ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — SNAT 258. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: BM 012282 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P130018). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P130018..
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.