Position in chronology
Orient 55, 160 no. 6
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 P424381)
Transliteration
1(u) 6(disz) gurusz u4 2(disz)-sze3 umma-ta du6-gesz-i3-ka-sze3 ma2 su3 gid2-da u4 2(disz)-sze3 sze gesz e3-a u3 ma2-a si-ga u4 1(disz)-sze3 i7 sal4-la-asz ma2 gid2-da u4 3(disz)-sze3 sze ba-al-la sze bala-a u3 guru7-a im-ur3-ra ugula ur-szakkan kiszib3 ur-szara2 mu# en# ga-esz# ba#-hun ur-szara2 dub-sar dumu szesz-kal-la
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 160 no. 6. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: WCMA 20.1.14 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424381). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P424381..
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.