Position in chronology
CDLJ 2009/6 §2
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 P388400)
Transliteration
1(gesz2) sa gi-zi gu-nigin2-ba 5(disz) sa-ta ki lugal-mu-ma-ag2-ta kiszib3 a-lu5-lu5 iti sze-kar-ra-gal2-la mu# en eridu ba-hun [a-lu5-lu5] dumu inim#-[szara2] kuruszda [szara2-ka]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CDLJ 2009/6 §2. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Charles C. Tandy Archaeology Museum,Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, USA (P388400) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P388400..
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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.