Position in chronology
SAA 07 053. Fragment of Tablet Inventory (JNES 42 26)
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (3) [...]..., "To consign to the Anunnaki," (4) [...], including its explanations, (5) [...] uncanonical [omens, including] its explanations. (7) [......] Nergal, (8) [......] Ni[nurta], (9) [...]...[...], (10) [...] Eša[rra] (Rest destroyed)
Source: 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/P336223/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[x x x x x]-MEŠ / [x x x x]-⸢su⸣-ú / [x x] ⸢x x⸣-ti-šú ana—d600—pa-qa-di / [x x] a-di ṣa-a-ti-šú / [x MU]-⸢MEŠ⸣ BAR-MEŠ / [a-di] ṣa-a-ti-šú / [x x x] ⸢d⸣U.GUR / [x x x] ⸢dMAŠ*⸣ / [x x x x]+⸢x⸣ na du [x x] / [x x x x]+⸢x⸣ É.⸢ŠÁR⸣.[RA] / [x x x x x]+⸢x⸣+[x x x]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian administrative record (palace or temple), edited by F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate (SAA 7, 1992). ORACC text P336223.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P336223). source
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/P336223/.
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.