Clay tablet. Counting board, the archaic cuneiform sign "DUG" (vessel) appears. From Uruk, Iraq. End of the 4th millennium BCE. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

Translation · reference

Experimental

Source: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Clay tablet. Counting board, the archaic cuneiform sign "DUG" (vessel) appears. From Uruk, Iraq. End of the 4th millennium BCE. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AClay_tablet._Counting_board%2C_the_archaic_cuneiform_sign_%22DUG%22_(vessel)_appears._From_Uruk%2C_Iraq._End_of_the_4th_millennium_BCE._Vorderasiatisches_Museum%2C_Berlin.jpg. Description: Clay tablet. Counting board; the archaic cuneiform sign "DUG" (vessel) appears. From Uruk, Iraq. End of the 4th millennium BCE. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.

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: Clay tablet. Counting board; the archaic cuneiform sign "DUG" (vessel) appears. From Uruk, Iraq. End of the 4th millennium BCE. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.

Attribution

Image: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Clay tablet. Counting board, the archaic cuneiform sign "DUG" (vessel) appears. From Uruk, Iraq. End of the 4th millennium BCE. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AClay_tablet._Counting_board%2C_the_archaic_cuneiform_sign_%22DUG%22_(vessel)_appears._From_Uruk%2C_Iraq._End_of_the_4th_millennium_BCE._Vorderasiatisches_Museum%2C_Berlin.jpg. Description: Clay tablet. Counting board; the archaic cuneiform sign "DUG" (vessel) appears. From Uruk, Iraq. End of the 4th millennium BCE. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin..

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

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.

~3500 BCE

Kish Tablet

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.

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

The earliest historical document in human history.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.