Position in chronology
Mark of Ancient Man 012
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 P417468)
Transliteration
3(u) 1(disz) gu4 ab2 hi-a 1(gesz'u) 1(gesz2) 4(u) 3(disz)# udu masz2 hi-a zi-ga in-ta-e3-a iti sze#-sag11#-ku5# mu gu#-za# en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2 e2-tum amar-suen nita kal-ga lugal uri5-ma lugal an-ub-da limmu2-ba lugal-iti-da dub-sar dumu ur-dumu-zi-da ARAD2-zu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Mark of Ancient Man 012. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ur-Nammu y14 — The throne of Enlil was fashioned based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (P417468) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P417468..
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.