Position in chronology
SACT 1, 147
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 P128902)
Transliteration
1(u) u8 2(u) masz2 2(u) 5(disz) ud5 szu-gid2 e2-muhaldim 1(disz) gu4 5(disz) udu 5(disz) masz2 ba-usz2 mu ur-gi7-ra-sze3 szu-i3-li2 sipa ur-gi7-ra-ke4 szu ba-ti ugula i3-lal3-lum u4 2(u) 8(disz)-kam ki in-ta-e3-a-ta ba-zi iti diri ezem-me-ki-gal2 us2-sa mu gu-za [en-lil2-la2] ba-dim2 1(gesz2) 6(disz)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — SACT 1, 147. 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: Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA (P128902) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P128902..
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.