Position in chronology
SAA 11 092. List of Cattle(?) (ADD 1066)
Translation · reference
High confidence(Beginning destroyed or too broken for translation) (ii 1) sheep [......], (ii 2) sheep [......], (ii 3) sheep [......], (ii 4) female [kid ......], (ii 5) Puka[...] (ii 6) 1 ox [......] (Rest destroyed or too broken for translation)
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/P335881/
Why it matters
Transliteration
[x x x x x] / [x x x x x] / [x x x x x] / [x x x x]-ši? / [x x x x]-⸢ú⸣ / [x x x x]-ḫi / [x x x x]+⸢x⸣-ḫi / [x x x x x]+⸢x⸣ / [x x x x x]+⸢x⸣ / UDU [x x x x] / UDU [x x x x] / UDU [x x x x] / MÍ.⸢ÁŠ⸣.[GÀR? x x x] / mpu-ka-[x x x] / 01 GUD ⸢ta?⸣ [x x x] / ina UD? ⸢si?⸣ [x x x] / 01 NE [x x x x] / [x] MAḪ? [x 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 P335881.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P335881). 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/P335881/.
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.