Position in chronology
TLB 03, 148
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 P134289)
Transliteration
6(asz) sze gur lugal sze ur5-ra aga3-us2 ensi2 dumu unu i3-dub bara2-si-ga-ta ki ur-nansze-ta kiszib3 lu2-giri17-zal szesz-lugal-pa-e3 ugula nu-banda3 ur-ba-ba6 dumu ur-sa6-ga iti# diri sze-sag11-ku5 mu ha-ar-szi hu-ur5-ti u3 ki-masz ba-hul lu2-giri17-zal dub-sar dumu lu2-asznan
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — TLB 03, 148. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: LB 0260 (de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P134289). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P134289..
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.