Position in chronology
SAA 11 149. From a List of Temple Employees(?) (ADD 0883)
Translation · reference
High confidence(1) People, [...] (2) in the temple of [DN ......]: (3) Nabû-eriba [...] (4) Marduk-iddi[na ...] (5) N[N] (Break) (r 1) Total: [......]
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/P335724/
Why it matters
Transliteration
LÚ.ERIM-MEŠ ⸢x⸣+[x] / ina É—d[x] / mdPA—SU [x] / mdAMAR.UTU—SUM*-[na] / m⸢x⸣+[x x x x x] / PAB [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 P335724.
Attribution
Image: BM — (British Museum, London, UK) — from Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P335724). 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/P335724/.
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.