Position in chronology
CBS 15051
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P227791.
Transliteration
ninda# [...] ninda i3 de2#-[a] i3-nun ninda i3 de2#-[a] i3 szah2 ninda i3 de2-[a] tesz2# si3-ga-bi ninda i3 ninda ga ninda szu-i ninda szu il2-la ninda dilim2-da ninda ki-si3-ga [ninda] ki-an-na [ninda ki ]utu#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC)) — CBS 15051. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P227791) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P227791..
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.