Position in chronology
CBS 13818
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P268828.
Transliteration
x-bi x [...] ba-an-x [...] kiszib3 ur-me-me# lu2-inim-gi?-[na?] dub-sar dumu ma2-gur8-re
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CBS 13818. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CBS 13818 (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P268828). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P268828..
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.