Position in chronology
Hermitage 3, 129
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 P211499)
Transliteration
1(disz) sila4 lu2-uru11 ra2-gaba 5(disz) udu 1(disz) masz2-gal 1(disz) sila4 ur-dumu-zi-da nu-banda3 1(disz) sila4 id-da-a 1(disz) sila4 ensi2 gir2-su 2(disz) udu 1(disz) sila4 ku-ga-a 1(disz) sila4 ur-suen 2(disz) sila4 szesz-da-da sanga 1(disz) udu niga ensi2 nibru 2(disz) udu niga 1(disz) sila4 niga ur-nigar ka-guru7# mu-kux(DU) iti u5-bi2-gu7 mu si-mu-ru-um u3 lu-lu-bu a-ra2 1(u) la2 1(disz@t)-kam-asz ba-hul u4 1(u) 1(disz)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Hermitage 3, 129. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P211499) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P211499..
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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.