Position in chronology
SAA 11 022. List of Fruit Trees (ADD 1052)
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) 212 [by the royal cubit] length of [...], (3) 86 by the royal cubit width. (4) 231 peach trees, (5) 195 apple trees, (6) 4 ṣuṣūnu trees, (7) 50 fig trees: (8) total 480 named trees. (9) 3,000 vines. (r 1) 2,232 [...s], (r 2) 40 [...s]. (Rest destroyed)
Source: Fales, F.M. & Postgate, J.N. 1995. Imperial Administrative Records, Part II: Provincial and Military Administration. SAA 11. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa11/P335868/
Why it matters
Transliteration
02-me-12 [ina 01 KÙŠ LUGAL] / (blank) GÍD.DA ša [x x] / 86 ina 01 KÙŠ LUGAL DAGAL / 02-me-31 GIŠ.ḫa-ḫu / 01-me-95 GIŠ.ḪAŠḪUR / 04 GIŠ.ṣu-ṣu-nu / 50 (erasures) GIŠ.MA <$x$> / PAB 04-me-80 GIŠ-MEŠ zak-ru / 03-lim (erasures) GIŠ.til-lu-tú / 22?-me-32 [x x] / 40 ⸢x x⸣ [x x x]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian administrative record (provincial or military), edited by F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate (SAA 11, 1995). ORACC text P335868.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) ? — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P335868). source
Translation excerpted from Fales, F.M. & Postgate, J.N. 1995. Imperial Administrative Records, Part II: Provincial and Military Administration. SAA 11. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa11/P335868/.
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.