Position in chronology
Orient 55, 159 no. 5
Not yet translated
This tablet is catalogued with its transliteration, 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 P424401)
Transliteration
1(disz) e2-ki iti dal-ta 1(disz) lugal#-da5-ba-an iti szu-numun-na-ta 1(disz) ARAD2-hul3-la iti e2-iti-6(disz)-ta ri-ri-ga ugula ba-sa6 kiszib3 nam-sza3-tam ur-am3-ma mu en eridu ba-hun ur-am3-ma dub-sar dumu na-silim
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 159 no. 5. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: WCMA 93.1.109c (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424401). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P424401..
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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.