Position in chronology
Adab 0863
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P217551.
Transliteration
5(asz@c) gu gu2 kun-sze3 2(asz@c) ur-su sukkal 3(asz@c) lugal-ezem nu-banda3 bahar2 3(asz@c) a-zu-gal 5(asz@c) lugal-e2-masz-e engar 1(u@c) nita-x 2(asz@c)#? [...] 3(asz@c) gal [...] engar-mah# 1(asz@c)#? [...] szunigin 3(u@c) 7(asz@c) [gu] gu2 ma2-a ab-gal2 1(u@c) ni x x a-mur-[...] 2(asz@c) ur-kusz2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0863. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P217551) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P217551..
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.