Position in chronology
United States versus Approximately 450 Ancient Cuneiform Tablets, 2017 (page 1 crop)
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:United States versus Approximately 450 Ancient Cuneiform Tablets, 2017 (page 1 crop).jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AUnited_States_versus_Approximately_450_Ancient_Cuneiform_Tablets%2C_2017_(page_1_crop).jpg. Description: This is a United States government court filing from a smuggling case involving Hobby Lobby and archaeological looting in Iraq .
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: This is a United States government court filing from a smuggling case involving Hobby Lobby and archaeological looting in Iraq .
Attribution
Image: United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:United States versus Approximately 450 Ancient Cuneiform Tablets, 2017 (page 1 crop).jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AUnited_States_versus_Approximately_450_Ancient_Cuneiform_Tablets%2C_2017_(page_1_crop).jpg. Description: This is a United States government court filing from a smuggling case involving Hobby Lobby and archaeological looting in Iraq ..
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.