Position in chronology
NABU 2007/047
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration 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 P333075)
Transliteration
1(disz) _asz2-gar3_ li-pi2-it qa2-ti a-na [utu?] _ki-gub_ ka-pi2-is, _gir2#_ [i-szu] _kal_ i-szu _silim#_ [i-szu] _ze2 za3_ [...] i-na _mur_ a-szar mu#-[ki-il re-szi ...] _mur za3_ [...] _za3 mur_ u3 _gub3 [mur_ ...] ki-di-it _dal_ e-li# [...] _dal sza3_ ri-s,a i#-[szu ...] 1(u) 2(disz) ti-ra-nu a-na ta-wi-ti-sza! sza-al-ma-at a-hi-tam i-szu _iti sze-sag11-ku5 u4 2(u) 1(disz)-kam_ _mu_ am-mi-s,a-du-qa2 _lugal-e alan-a-ni masz2 gaba tab-ba_
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC)) — NABU 2007/047. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P333075) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P333075..
Related tablets
Related sources
Whatever its purpose, this single tablet shows that Babylonian mathematicians, working in base-60, had an arithmetic understanding of right triangles a millennium before Pythagoras was born.
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.