Position in chronology
Aleppo 419
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P100751.
Transliteration
[n] udu bar-gal2 [n] u8 bar-su-ga [n x]-nita2 bar-su-ga [n ...] bar-su-ga [n] ud5 [n] masz2-gal [n] masz2 [sa2-du11 ]szara2 anzu2 babbar2 [ki] giri3-ni-i3-sa6-ta [...] i3-dab5 mu amar-suen lugal-e ur-bi2-lum mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Aleppo 419. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y2 — Urbilum destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: National Museum of Syria, Aleppo, Syria (P100751) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P100751..
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.