Position in chronology
WCMA 20.1.13
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P424380.
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Neo-Babylonian (ca. 626-539 BC)) — WCMA 20.1.13. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: WCMA 20.1.13 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Bābili (mod. Babylon) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P424380). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P424380..
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.