Position in chronology
JCS 52, 045 58
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 P145852)
Transliteration
2(disz) ba-an-du8-du8 kikken2 ki-la2-bi 1(u) 9(disz) ma-na 1(u) 7(disz) gin2 1(disz) ma-na 8(disz) gin2 uruda lu2 ur2!-gigir de6-a lu2-banda3 mu6-sub3 e2 ba-ab-KA kin til-la lugal-<e2>-mah-e in-la2 ki lu2-nin-szubur-ta giri3 lugal#-e2-mah-e simug iti nesag mu us2-sa lu-lu-bum2 si-mu-ru-um a-ra2 1(u) la2 1(disz)-kam ba-hul gaba-ri
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — JCS 52, 045 58. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Arizona State Museum, Tucson, Arizona, USA (P145852) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P145852..
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.