Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 182, Bod A 14
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, 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
3(asz) sze gur x x [...] sza3 3(asz) [...] x x-ta# ki ur#-[...] x x [...]-ta# mu ur-nin-gesz#-zi-da dumu lugal-sa6#-ga#-sze3 kiszib3 ur-szusz3-ba-ba6 dumu na-ib2-[...] sze wi-li-HA-x iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu na-ru2-a-mah en-lil2-la2 ba-du3 ur-szusz3-ba-ba6 dub-sar dumu na-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 182, Bod A 14. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Bod A 014 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P248973). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P248973..
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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.