Position in chronology
Nisaba 17, 005a-d
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, 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 P127598)
Transliteration
7(asz) sze gur lugal zi3 KA-sze3 sze szuku-ra ba-zi i3-dub uru11-ta lu2-sa6-ga szu ba-ti mu# erin2# esz3# didli#-sze3# iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu gu-za en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Nisaba 17, 005a-d. 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: BM 088882 & BM 093364 & BM 093490 & BM 093494 & BM 093508 & BM 100380 & Cugnin 020 & Cugnin 021 & Cugnin 054 & SE 004 (British Museum, London, UK; private: Cugnin, France; Couvent Saint-Etienne, Jerusalem) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P127598). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P127598..
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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.