Position in chronology
Complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir 2020
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir 2020.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AComplaint_tablet_to_Ea-Nasir_2020.jpg. Description: Cuneiform clay tablet to the merchant Ea-Nasir, complaining about delivery of the wrong grade of copper. BM 131236 https://www.archibab.fr/T12972 (consulté le 24/02/2023) c. 1750 BCE. Currently in the British Museum.
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: Cuneiform clay tablet to the merchant Ea-Nasir, complaining about delivery of the wrong grade of copper. BM 131236 https://www.archibab.fr/T12972 (consulté le 24/02/2023) c. 1750 BCE. Currently in the
Attribution
Image: Zunkir — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir 2020.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AComplaint_tablet_to_Ea-Nasir_2020.jpg. Description: Cuneiform clay tablet to the merchant Ea-Nasir, complaining about delivery of the wrong grade of copper. BM 131236 https://www.archibab.fr/T12972 (consulté le 24/02/2023) c. 1750 BCE. 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The earliest historical document in human history.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.