Position in chronology
ISHS MS481-01
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 P465776)
Transliteration
[n] n sila3# 3(disz)# 1/3(disz) gin2#? sze gur x [a2] lu2# hun-ga2 a-sza3-ga n 6(asz) 4(barig)#? gur a2 lu2 hun-ga2 x la2-ia3 nig2-ka9-ak ARAD2-dingir?-ra a-tu dumu lugal-saga-ke4 su-su-dam mu# x-[...] a-tu dub-sar dumu lugal-sa6-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — ISHS MS481-01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Idaho State Archives, Idaho State Historical Society, Boise, Idaho, USA (P465776) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P465776..
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.