Position in chronology
YOS 15, 173
Translation — curated editorial
EditorialEditorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P414545.
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — YOS 15, 173. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri, USA (permanent loan from Missouri School of Religion [formerly “Bible College of Missouri”], Jefferson City, Missouri) (P414545) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P414545..
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.