Position in chronology
CDLB 2016/001, §2.2.5
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 P392636)
Transliteration
1(disz) sila4 mu-kux(DU) en-sza3-ku3#-ge 1(disz) sila4 niga mu-kux(DU) lu2-nin-szubur nanna zabar-dab5 maszkim 5(disz) u8 szu-gid2 e2-muhaldim-sze3 zi-ga u4 3(u) la2 1(disz@t)-kam iti# ezem-nin-a-zu mu us2-sa ur-bi2-lum ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLB 2016/001, §2.2.5. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles, California, USA (P392636) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P392636..
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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.