Position in chronology
Ontario 2, missing 2
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 P209761)
Transliteration
2(u) 9(disz) udu 2(disz) sila4 1(u) masz2 u4 4(disz)-kam ki ab-ba-sa6-ga-ta in-ta-e3-a i3-dab5 iti ses-da-gu7 mu us2-sa gu-za en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2 4(u) 1(disz)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Ontario 2, missing 2. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ur-Nammu y15 — Year after: The throne of Enlil was fashioned based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (P209761) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P209761..
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.