Position in chronology
UET 3, 1422
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 P137747)
Transliteration
1(gesz2) 5(u) 2(disz) geme2 usz-bar 5(disz) geme2 kikken2 sa2-du11 szabra 3(disz) geme2 kikken2 na-gab2!-tum 3(disz) geme2 kikken2 ezem ku3-ga 1(disz) sila3 i3-ta i3-bi 2(barig) 3(disz) sila3 i3 erin geme2 usz-bar geme2 i3-nun u3 geme2 kikken2-ne tug2 be6-da-bi zi-ga iti ezem-an-na mu us2-sa bad3 gal# ba-du3-a mu us2-sa#-bi giri3 szu-gu-um dub-sar gaba-ri sza3 du10-gan szabra
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — UET 3, 1422. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P137747) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P137747..
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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.