Position in chronology
CDLJ 2010/1 §4.01
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 P393091)
Transliteration
1(u) esir2 had2 gur lugal mu ma2 gibil-sze3 ki ensi2 umma-ta kiszib3 en-dingir-mu giri3 a-mur-suen lu2 kas4 u3 szesz-a-ni lu2#? x iti ezem-mah mu bad3 ma-da ba-du3 szul-gi nita kal-ga lugal uri5-ma lugal an-ub-da limmu2-ba en-dingir-mu ra2-gaba ARAD2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLJ 2010/1 §4.01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y30 — The frontier wall was built based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Harvard Art Museum / Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P393091) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P393091..
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.