Position in chronology
JAOS 108, 119 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 P111812)
Transliteration
1(disz) udu niga da-gan sza3 e2 ba-ba-ti la-ma-har sagi maszkim 1(disz) masz2-gal in-szi-we-er dumu ad-da-gi-na ensi2 ha-ar-szi giri3 ri-ib-hu-ti sukkal ku3-nanna sukkal maszkim iti u4 1(u) 4(disz) ba-zal ki zu-ba-ga-ta ba-zi giri3 ad-da-kal-la dub-sar iti ezem-mah mu en nanna# kar#-zi-da ba-hun 2(disz) udu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — JAOS 108, 119 2. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P111812) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P111812..
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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.