MAH 19634

~1900 BCE·Old Assyrian·P424349

Translation — curated editorial

Editorial

Experimental

Editorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P424349.

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Assyrian (ca. 1950-1850 BC)) — MAH 19634. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: MAH 19634 (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P424349). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P424349..

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

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.

~3500 BCE

Kish Tablet

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.

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

The earliest historical document in human history.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.