Position in chronology
SMUI 1913.14.1238
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 P421181)
Transliteration
3(barig) 1(disz) <sila3> sze ur5-ra masz2-bi igi 3(disz)-gal2 si-ge4-dam ki ur-nigar-ka-ta lu2-dingir-ra# szu ba-ti igi-tur-tur mu DI-TUM iti diri sze-sag-ku5 mu en nanna ba-hun lu2-[...] [...] dumu NE-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — SMUI 1913.14.1238. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y15 — The en-priest of Nanna was installed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA (P421181) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P421181..
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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.