Cuneiform tablet c. 2050 BCE inside the State Library of Victoria

~2050 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·used

Translation · reference

Experimental

Source: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet c. 2050 BCE inside the State Library of Victoria.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet_c._2050_BCE_inside_the_State_Library_of_Victoria.jpg. Description: Cuneiform script was first used to record economic transactions around 3400 BCE. This clay tablet, written in cuneiform script in Sumerian, documents taxes paid in sheep and goats during the tenth month of the 46th year of Shulgi, the secon

Why it matters

Transliteration

Scholarly note

Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Cuneiform script was first used to record economic transactions around 3400 BCE. This clay tablet, written in cuneiform script in Sumerian, documents taxes paid in sheep and goats during the tenth mon

Attribution

Image: Yu Chu Chin — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Cuneiform tablet c. 2050 BCE inside the State Library of Victoria.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACuneiform_tablet_c._2050_BCE_inside_the_State_Library_of_Victoria.jpg. Description: Cuneiform script was first used to record economic transactions around 3400 BCE. This clay tablet, written in cuneiform script in Sumerian, documents taxes paid in sheep and goats during the tenth month of the 46th year of Shulgi, the secon.

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

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.

~2050 BCE

Drehem Cattle-Distribution Tablet

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.

~1340 BCE

Amarna Letter EA 153 — Abi-milku of Tyre

Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.