Position in chronology
Berens 015
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P105726.
Transliteration
1(disz) id-gur2 i3-gesz# a-mur-iszkur lu2 kas4 ki-masz-ta du-ni zi-ga iti munu4-gu7
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Berens 015. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland (P105726) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P105726..
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.