Position in chronology
StBibFran 4 5
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 P130391)
Transliteration
1(u) sze gur giri3-ni-i3-sa6 8(asz) gur a-a-gi-na 7(asz) gur sze KA bu3-ra lu2-dingir-ra dam-gar3 1(asz) gur a-li2 2(u) ur-da-ni 1(u) ma2-gur8-re szunigin 2(u) 5(asz) 3(barig) gur e2 KU-MUNUS-ka iti li9-si4 u3 <iti> dumu-zi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — StBibFran 4 5. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem (P130391) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P130391..
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.