Position in chronology
TCBI 2/2, 64
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 P381718)
Transliteration
1(barig) 4(ban2) sze gur ki szu-ma-ma a-bi-a-a szu ba-ti igi lu2-en-lil2 igi ga-la igi ur-nin-mug mu gu-za en-lil2-la2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — TCBI 2/2, 64. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Banca d'Italia, Rome, Italy (P381718) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P381718..
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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.