Position in chronology
Numerical tablet Khafaje OIM A21310
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued and photographed, but no published translation exists yet. Our translation engine works through the untranslated corpus every night, oldest first — this page will update the day its turn comes. If you are a specialist and can read it, we would love your help.
The world it comes from
Hammurabi, the Epic of Gilgamesh, mathematics.
From the same catalogue range (near P235768)
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Numerical tablet, dated ca 3500-3350 BC (Uruk V phase), found in Khafaje. Oriental Institute Museum A21310. CDLI P235768 https://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P235768
Attribution
Image: Original: Daderot Derivative work : Zunkir — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Numerical tablet Khafaje OIM A21310.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANumerical_tablet_Khafaje_OIM_A21310.jpg. Description: Numerical tablet, dated ca 3500-3350 BC (Uruk V phase), found in Khafaje. Oriental Institute Museum A21310. CDLI P235768 https://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P235768.
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.