Position in chronology
SAA 07 044. Memorandum re Peculations in the Temple (ADD 1069)
Translation — scholar edition
SAA 7(1) [... & o]f the day. (2) [...] & Ubru-Nabû (3) [...] & sheep of the temple (4) [...] & of the oxen (5) 1/2 [min]a & of the cupbearer (6) 14 shekels & of ... [...] (7) 12 shekels & of .[...] (8) 3 shekels & o[f ...] (9) 6[+x shekels ......] (Break) (r 1) In all, 3 minas [...], (r 2) silver of the house of [...]. (r 3) [They] h[ave restituted] the iniquity and injustice, the crime and theft of Bubû [t]o the [...]ean [...]. (Rest destroyed)
State Archives of Assyria, volume 7 — scholar edition (ORACC).
Transliteration
PAB* 03* ⸢MA*.NA*⸣ [x x x] / KUG.UD ša É ⸢x⸣+[x x x] / pir-ku u la ket-tu [o] / ṣar-tu u šar*-qu-tú* [o] / šá mbu-bu-u* [o] / [a?]-⸢na?⸣ LÚ*.[x x] / [(x) x x]+⸢x⸣-la?-sa-a.a ⸢us⸣-[x x]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian administrative record (palace or temple), edited by F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate (SAA 7, 1992). ORACC text P335884.
Attribution
Image: Adapted from F. Mario Fales and J. Nicholas Postgate, Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration (State Archives of Assyria, 7), 1992. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2017, as part of the research programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair in the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at LMU Munich (Karen Radner, Humboldt Professorship 2015. The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P335884/..
Translation excerpted from Fales, F.M. & Postgate, J.N. 1992. Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration. SAA 7. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa07/P335884/.
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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.