Position in chronology
Princeton 2, 347
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P201346.
Transliteration
7(disz) kaskal ki a-gu-ta kiszib3 szara2-he2-gal2 sza3 bala-a szara2-he2-gal2 dub-sar dumu ur-mes
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Princeton 2, 347. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, USA (P201346) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P201346..
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
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