Position in chronology
SAA 07 177. Miscellaneous Offerings(?)
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed) (1) 1 [...] N[N] (2) of the woman Dadaya [...] (3) towel [...] (4) 2 jar[s of ...] (5) toget[her ...]...[...] (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/P336645/
Why it matters
Transliteration
01? [x (x) x]+⸢x⸣ m⸢x⸣+[x x] / ša MÍ.da-da-a [x x] / TÚG!.sa-su-up-⸢pu⸣ [x x] / 02 DUG.ŠAB-⸢MEŠ?⸣ [x x] / is!-sa-[ḫi-iš x x] / ma?-[x x]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian administrative record (palace or temple), edited by F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate (SAA 7, 1992). ORACC text P336645.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P336645). 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/P336645/.
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.