Position in chronology
WZKM 59-60, 114 4
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 P142056)
Transliteration
1(u) sa gi gi# bu3-za-a it#-ra-ak-i3-li2 szu ba-ti iti ezem-nin-a-[zu] [sza-at-suen] [dam] szul-gi nita kal-ga lugal uri5-ma [it-ra-ak]-i3#-[li2] ra2-[gaba] ARAD2-[zu]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — WZKM 59-60, 114 4. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Museo Barracco, Rome, Italy (P142056) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P142056..
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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.