Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/1, pl. 048, 1911-488
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.
From the same catalogue range (near P142761)
Transliteration
1/2(disz) gin2 ku3-babbar a2 ma2 hun-ga2 mu ma2 mu-ni-nigin2 i7-da lah6 nu-ub-zu-a-sze3 ma2 tur-ba-IGI hun-ga2 mu lu2-nin-szubur-ka-sze3 kiszib3 igi-sa6-sa6 ma2 mu igi-sze3-a-bi ma2 gi-zi-sze3 igi-sa6-sa6-ge ba-an-de6 iti a2-ki-ti u4 1(u) 5(disz)-am3 im-da-gal2 mu e2 puzur4-isz-da-gan ba-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/1, pl. 048, 1911-488. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P142761) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P142761..
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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.