Position in chronology
Mashkan-shapir 038 n. 6
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 P406983)
Transliteration
1(disz) ma2 1(gesz2) gur 1(ban2) 6(disz) sila3-ta bala-ta u4 2(u) la2 1(disz@t)-a zal-la-ta dumu a-bi2-a-li2 ma-lah5-sze3 i3-ib-szi-hun ki na-ap-la-num mar-tu-sze3 nig2-szu-tak4-a ba-a-gar kisig?-sze3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Mashkan-shapir 038 n. 6. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P406983) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P406983..
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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.
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