Position in chronology
Anonymous 497538
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P497538.
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Anonymous 497538. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 497538 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P497538). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P497538..
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.
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.