Sumerian Cuneiform is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. First appearing in the 4th millennium BC in what is now Iraq, it was dubbed cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) because of the distinctive wedge form of the letters, created by pressing a reed stylus into wet clay. Early Sumerian writings were essentially pictograms, which became simplified in the early and mid 3rd millennium BC to a series of strokes, along with a commensurate reduction in the number of discrete signs used (from c.1500 to 600). The script system had a very long life and was used by the Sumerians as well as numerous later groups – notably the Assyrians, Elamites, Akkadians and Hittites – for around three thousand years. Certain signs and phonetic standards live on in modern languages of the Middle and Far East, but the writing system is essentially extinct. It was therefore cause for great excitement when the ‘code’ of ancient cuneiform was cracked by a group of English, French and German Assyriologists and philologists in the mid 19th century AD. This opened up a vital source of information about these ancient groups that could not have been obtained in any other way.
Cuneiform was used on monuments dedicated to heroic – and usually royal – individuals, but perhaps its most important function was that of record keeping. The palace-based society at Ur and other large urban centres was accompanied by a remarkably complex and multifaceted bureaucracy, which was run by professional administrators and a priestly class, all of whom were answerable to central court control. Most of what we know about the way the culture was run and administered comes from cuneiform tablets, which record the everyday running of the temple and palace complexes in minute detail, as in the present case. The Barakat Gallery has secured the services of Professor Lambert (University of Birmingham), a renowned expert in the decipherment and translation of cuneiform, to examine and process the information on these tablets. The following is a transcription of his analysis of this tablet:
Clay Tablet 25 Lines of Sumerian Cuneiform. This is assembled from pieces, with a little loss at the joins, but the whole text can be read. It is an administrative document from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, dated to the “plow” month (not yet to be placed in their seasons) of the 2nd year of Ibbi-Sin, last king of the dynasty, c.2027 B.C. It is a listing of baskets. Sumer had few natural resources, clay and reeds being the most obvious. From reeds they made houses, boats, mats, and baskets, etc. This document comes from a large economic organisation such as a temple of the palace, and records the baskets made, and their purposes within the one month. Some words seem to be unkown,

Translation:

124 baskets, set aside for goods and …..

20 panniers of 30 sila capacity, filled with ……

50 baskets of 30 sila capacity, filled with …….

60 panniers with sieves of 60 sila capacity, filled with onions.

6……baskets, set aside for grass.

275 gigur-baskets, filled with mustard and coriander, the knig’s offering.

10 baskets, set aside for goods.

15 gigur-baskets of 60 sila capacity, filled with mustard and coriander.

10 baskets of 30 sila capacity, filled with onions: by Mr Ninmu.


A sila was a measure of capacity, about .85 of a litre, The total of 570 baskets for the month indicates the size of the economic organisation responsible. The man named at the end, Ninmu, was either the man in charge of the wokshop, or a clerk who collected the data. Documents of this content are rare. The tablet was rolled with scribe’s cylinder seal to show the inscription, but nowhere is it fully clear, only the beginnings of the lines: Ishar-ma-(….)

Son of Puzur-.(….)