Position in chronology
BMC Roma 8, 12 5
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 P107224)
Transliteration
5(gesz2) 3(u) la2 3(disz) udu-nita2 2(gesz2) masz2 e2-udu#-sze3 ki ur-e11-e-ta ba-sa6 i3-dab5 iti pa4-u2-e mu an-sza-an ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — BMC Roma 8, 12 5. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y35 — Anšan destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Museo Barracco, Rome, Italy (P107224) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P107224..
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.