Position in chronology
Middle Assyrian cuneiform tablet recording barley allocations
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Middle Assyrian cuneiform tablet recording barley allocations.png. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMiddle_Assyrian_cuneiform_tablet_recording_barley_allocations.png. Description: Cuneiform tablet: record of barley allocations. Ca. 13th century B.C.
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Cuneiform tablet: record of barley allocations. Ca. 13th century B.C.
Attribution
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Middle Assyrian cuneiform tablet recording barley allocations.png. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMiddle_Assyrian_cuneiform_tablet_recording_barley_allocations.png. Description: Cuneiform tablet: record of barley allocations. Ca. 13th century B.C..
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.