Position in chronology
ISHS MS481-03
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 P465778)
Transliteration
2(gesz2) 1(u) kusz gar ka <dug> ba-ba saga kesz2-de3 ki a-kal-la-ta kiszib3 lu2-bala-saga iti diri mu us2-sa ki#-masz ba-hul lu2-bala#-[sa6-ga] dub#-[sar] dumu ma-ma
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — ISHS MS481-03. 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 (P465778) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P465778..
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.