Proto-cuneiform sexagesimal type Sa.svg

~3300 BCE·Uruk Period·numeral

Translation · reference

Experimental

Source: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Proto-cuneiform sexagesimal type Sa.svg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AProto-cuneiform_sexagesimal_type_Sa.svg. Description: Proto-cuneiform numeral signs base 60 and subbase 10, Type S^a according to the typology established by Nissen-Damerow-Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping, Chicago UP 1993

Why it matters

Transliteration

Scholarly note

Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Proto-cuneiform numeral signs base 60 and subbase 10, Type S^a according to the typology established by Nissen-Damerow-Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping, Chicago UP 1993

Attribution

Image: Otfried Lieberknecht — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Proto-cuneiform sexagesimal type Sa.svg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AProto-cuneiform_sexagesimal_type_Sa.svg. Description: Proto-cuneiform numeral signs base 60 and subbase 10, Type S^a according to the typology established by Nissen-Damerow-Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping, Chicago UP 1993.

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

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.

~3500 BCE

Kish Tablet

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.

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

The earliest historical document in human history.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.