Position in chronology
HSS 04, 120
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P110393.
Why it matters
Transliteration
1(u) gin2 ku3-babbar la2-ia3 su-ga muhaldim-ne ki nam-ha-ni-ta e2-gal-la ba-an-kux(KWU147) sza3 uri5-ma giri3 lam!-lam!-ma dumu nam-ha-ni iti mu-szu-du7 mu gu-za en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — HSS 04, 120. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ur-Nammu y14 — The throne of Enlil was fashioned based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P110393) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P110393..
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.