Position in chronology
Ontario 2, 321
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 P209438)
Transliteration
2(disz) sila3 sze igi-[...] sila3 ur-dun 6(disz) sila3 bi2-da 6(disz) sila3 ur-esz3-lil2-la2 4(disz) sila4 szara2-u3-[numun] [sze] numun ninda-sze3 guru7 tak4-a ki in-sa6-sa6-ta kiszib3 lu2-szara2 sza3 kar-ra-ka ugula lu2-giri17-zal iti ezem-szul-gi mu bad3 mar-tu ba-du3 lu2-szara2 dub-sar dumu [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Ontario 2, 321. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y37 — The Amorite wall was built based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (P209438) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P209438..
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.