Position in chronology
NATN 315
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 P121013)
Transliteration
1(gesz2) 8(asz) sze gur si2-im-tum lugal#?-ta sza3 u-pi5 egir buru14-sze3 ag2-e-dam ki a2-zi-da-ta ba-ra-ad-i3-li2-sze3 szu ba-ti igi ur-szu-mah igi tu-ra-am-i3-li2 igi a-pi-la-num2 mu en inanna unu i-bi-suen in-il ba-ra-ad-i3-li2-szu# [dumu er3-ra-ba-ni]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — NATN 315. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P121013) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P121013..
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.