Position in chronology
Babylonian cuneiform tablet with a map from Nippur 1550-1450 BCE
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Babylonian cuneiform tablet with a map from Nippur 1550-1450 BCE.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABabylonian_cuneiform_tablet_with_a_map_from_Nippur_1550-1450_BCE.jpg. Description: Babylonian cuneiform tablet with a map from Nippur 1550-1450 BCE. Kassite period [1] The "Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology" exhibit also included real artifacts excavated in regions visited by the ficitional Indiana Jones in t
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Babylonian cuneiform tablet with a map from Nippur 1550-1450 BCE. Kassite period [1] The "Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology" exhibit also included real artifacts excavated in regions visi
Attribution
Image: Mary Harrsch — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Babylonian cuneiform tablet with a map from Nippur 1550-1450 BCE.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABabylonian_cuneiform_tablet_with_a_map_from_Nippur_1550-1450_BCE.jpg. Description: Babylonian cuneiform tablet with a map from Nippur 1550-1450 BCE. Kassite period [1] The "Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology" exhibit also included real artifacts excavated in regions visited by the ficitional Indiana Jones in t.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.