Position in chronology
MVN 11, V
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 P116258)
Transliteration
8(disz) ha-bu3-da ki-la2-bi 5(disz) ma-na 5(disz) gin2 ba-la2 ki ur-nin-gesz-zi-da-ta [...] [mu lugal-im]-ru#-a-sze3 ur-[szul-pa]-e3 szu ba-ti giri3 inim-ba-ba6-i3-dab5 giri3 lu2-nin-gir2-su u3 ba-zi mu us2-sa ma2-dara3-abzu ba-ab-du8
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — MVN 11, V. 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 (P116258) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P116258..
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.