Position in chronology
SDSU 1
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 P249254)
Transliteration
5(disz) gu4 erin2 he2-bi2-la-at mu-kux(DU) iti u5-bi2-gu7 mu us2-sa ma2-dara3-abzu ba-ab-du8 u4 2(u) 3(disz)-kam 5(disz) gu4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — SDSU 1. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: H. M. Briggs Library, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota, USA (P249254) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P249254..
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.