Position in chronology
MCS 5, 31 AO 7895
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
5(disz) sila3 kasz du x ninda du8-a 4(disz) gin2 i3-gesz a-da-lal3 sukkal 5(disz) sila3 kasz 5(disz) sila3 ninda du8-a 4(disz) gin2 i3-gesz sze-le-bu-um sukkal 2(disz) dug dida 2(ban2) ninda du8-a 2(ban2) dabin kaskal kaskal-sze3 elam-me giri3 a-da-lal3 iti ezem-dumu-zi mu amar-suen lugal-e ur-bi2-lum mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — MCS 5, 31 AO 7895. 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: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P112791) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P112791..
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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.