Position in chronology
NYPL 076
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 P122612)
Transliteration
4(disz) 2/3(disz) ma-na 2/3(disz) gin2 2(u) sze ku3-babbar giri3 ur-e11-e 2/3(disz) ma-na 7(disz) 1/3(disz) gin2 2(disz) 1/2(disz) sze ku3-babbar giri3 a-ab-ba 1(disz) 1/3(disz) ma-na 3(disz) gin2 igi-6(disz)-gal2 2(disz) 1/2(disz) sze ku3 giri3 lugal-e2-mah-e szesz lugal-kiri6 ku3 masz a-sza3-ga ki ur-szara2-ta a-kal-la szu ba-ti mu an-sza-an ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — NYPL 076. 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: New York Public Library, New York, New York, USA (P122612) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P122612..
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.