Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 195, Bod A 60
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.
Transliteration
2(disz) udu 2(disz) sila4 3(disz) u8# 2(disz) giri17 1(disz) ud5 x su-ga# lu2-dingir-ra dumu inim-szara2 mu-kux(DU)# na-sa6 i3-dab5 iti ezem-mah mu us2-sa ki-masz ba-hul x x ab-ba-sa6-ga dub-[sar] dumu na-sa6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 195, Bod A 60. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P249006) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P249006..
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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.