Position in chronology
Babylonian tablet with envelope, side view
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Babylonian tablet with envelope, side view.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABabylonian_tablet_with_envelope%2C_side_view.jpg. Description: Tablet with envelope, Babylon 200 - 1600 BC. The envelope has been broken, so the tablet inside is visible. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Tablet with envelope, Babylon 200 - 1600 BC. The envelope has been broken, so the tablet inside is visible. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
Attribution
Image: Maksim Sokolov (maxergon.com) — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Babylonian tablet with envelope, side view.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABabylonian_tablet_with_envelope%2C_side_view.jpg. Description: Tablet with envelope, Babylon 200 - 1600 BC. The envelope has been broken, so the tablet inside is visible. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.