Position in chronology
JAC 29, 023-030 02
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, 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 P478822)
Transliteration
1(disz) sila3 tu7 1(disz) ku6# puzur4#-iszkur lu2 kin-gi4-a lugal u4 |BAD3.AN|-ta ki lugal-sze3 ba-gen-na-a 1(disz) sila3 tu7 1(disz) ku6 szu-suen lu2 kin-gi4-a-lugal u4 erin2 zah3 ARAD2 e2-gal dab5-ba-de3 im-gen-na-a zi-ga iti ezem-szul-gi mu hu-uh2-nu-ri ba-hul u4 2(u) 7(disz)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — JAC 29, 023-030 02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 478822 (private: anonymous, Jerusalem) — from Irisagrig (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P478822). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P478822..
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.