Kyoto 42

~2036 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P112447

Not yet translated

This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration and photographed, 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.

Read the Ur III · Neo-Sumerian chapter →

From the same catalogue range (near P112447)

Transliteration

ur-suen-ke4
na-ab-be2-a
la2-ia3 lu2-kal-la
a-na mu-da-gal2
sag iti min-esz3-sze3
1(disz) sila3-am3 ki-na nu-ub-ga2-ga2-da
mu lugal-bi in-pa3
tukum-bi
x na-ba-tak4
x-tab-be2-a
[x] lugal-bi in-pa3
[mu] szu-suen lugal-e [ma2]-gur8#-mah en-lil2 []nin-lil2-ra mu-ne-dim2
ur-[...]
PA.AH?-[...]
dumu ur-da-[...]

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Kyoto 42. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y2 — Great barge for Enlil and Ninlil fashioned based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.

Attribution

Image: Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan (P112447) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P112447..

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

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.

~2050 BCE

Drehem Cattle-Distribution Tablet

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.

~1340 BCE

Amarna Letter EA 153 — Abi-milku of Tyre

Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.