Position in chronology
SAA 11 086. Fragment Concerned with Sheep Theft(?) (ADD 1067)
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) 27 minas of sil[ver] (2) 600 (homers) of grain ... (Break) (r 1) [x+]60 [...], (r 2) 5 — persons, (r 3) 3, (compensation) for blood(shed) (r 4) 215 sheep [...] (r 5) Total: Ahheša[ya].
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/P335882/
Why it matters
Transliteration
27 MA*.NA* ⸢KUG*⸣.[UD] / 06*-me ŠE*.PAD*-MEŠ* ⸢x x x⸣ [x] / [x]-⸢me⸣-60 ⸢x⸣ [x x] / ⸢05⸣ LÚ.a-me-lu-⸢tú⸣ / 03 ša da-mi* / 02-me-15* UDU-MEŠ / PAB mŠEŠ-MEŠ-⸢ša*⸣-[a]
Scholarly note
Neo-Assyrian administrative record (provincial or military), edited by F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate (SAA 11, 1995). ORACC text P335882.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P335882). 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/P335882/.
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.