Position in chronology
Complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AComplaint_tablet_to_Ea-Nasir.jpg. Description: Cuneiform clay tablet to the merchant Ea-Nasir, complaining about delivery of the wrong grade of copper. c. 1750 BC. Currently in the British Museum.
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Cuneiform clay tablet to the merchant Ea-Nasir, complaining about delivery of the wrong grade of copper. c. 1750 BC. Currently in the British Museum.
Attribution
Image: Qualiesin — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AComplaint_tablet_to_Ea-Nasir.jpg. Description: Cuneiform clay tablet to the merchant Ea-Nasir, complaining about delivery of the wrong grade of copper. c. 1750 BC. Currently in the British Museum..
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.