Position in chronology
Akkadica 135/1, 100-101 14
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, but no published translation exists yet. Our translation engine works through the untranslated corpus every night, oldest first — this page will update the day its turn comes. If you are a specialist and can read it, we would love your help.
The world it comes from
A bureaucratic golden age, the Code of Ur-Nammu.
From the same catalogue range (near P480078)
Transliteration
1(u) gu2 pa ma:nu e2-kikken2 ba-ba saga ki e2-ur2-bi-du10-ta na-ba-sa2 szu ba-ti kiszib3 ku3-nin-ur4-ra sza3 bala-a mu i-bi2-suen lugal# ku3-nin-ur4-ra dub-[sar] dumu na-[silim]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Akkadica 135/1, 100-101 14. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ibbi-Suen y1 — Ibbi-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: DMMA AA.TC.65 (Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P480078). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P480078..
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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.