Position in chronology
RA 010, 065 018 etc. (cast copies)
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 P121373)
Transliteration
1(barig) sze lugal lugal-uszur4 dumu ur-e2-an-na 1(barig) lu2-nin-dar-a dumu lu2-pa3-da 1(barig) lu2-i3-sa6 dumu ur-en-ki szunigin 3(disz) gurusz 1(barig)-ta sze-bi 3(barig) he2-dab5 e2 nin-dar-a iti GAN2-masz mu us2-sa ki-masz ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — RA 010, 065 018 etc. (cast copies). No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: BM 088807 & BM 088678 & BM 088742 & Cugnin 018 & Cugnin 019 & Erm 04119 & UM 29-15-951 & UM 29-15-953 & UM 29-15-959 & WML 34.42 (British Museum, London, UK; private: Cugnin, France; State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; World Museum Liverpool, Liverpool, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P121373). source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P121373..
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.