Position in chronology
Hermitage 3, 496
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P211648.
Transliteration
pisan-dub-ba kiszib3 dab-ba a2 erin2-na-ka ur-lugal-mu# iti 1(u) 1(disz)-kam# i3-gal2 iti sig4-i3-szub-ba-gar-ta iti dumu-zi-sze3 mu szu-suen lugal-e ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Hermitage 3, 496. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y6 — Land of Zabšali destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P211648) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P211648..
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.