Position in chronology
CDLI Literary 000771, ex. 034
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P346673.
Transliteration
ni2# ba#-[...] szum-ma sa3-ru-x-[...] AB-[...] za-e-me-en x x [...] at-ti x-[...] tukumbi# [...] x x x [...] lu2#? [al-hi]-li#?-a ta#?-[...] ne?-hu#-tam am-mi-ni x-[...] x-[...] ba-hi-li-nam a he2-x-[...] isz-tu te-eh-hi-i i-[...] lu-ut-bu u2-na-[...] gi4-in dag#?-gi4#-[a ...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC)) — CDLI Literary 000771, ex. 034. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P346673) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P346673..
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.
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