Position in chronology
AUCT 3, 384
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 P104595)
Transliteration
2(disz) sila4 kiszib3 szesz-kal-la lu2 zu2-ga-li mu amar-suen lugal-e ur-bi2-lum mu-hul mu amar-suen lugal-e ur-bi2-lum mu-hul sza3 nu-zu sila-ta gur-ra la2-ia3 didli su-su pisan ab-ba-sa6-ga-ta ur-en-lil2-la2 szu ba-ti ur-en-lil2-la2 dub-sar dumu lu2-utu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AUCT 3, 384. 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: Siegfried H. Horn Museum, Institute of Archaeology, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, USA (P104595) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P104595..
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The earliest historical document in human history.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.