Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet, 2080 BCE - 2010 BCE
Clay
2 x 3.22
LSO.1024
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...
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 with 16 Lines of Sumerian Cuneiform The tablet is complete, with 13 lines on the obverse, three on the reverse, the first of these three a little damaged, the rest complete. The text is an administrative document from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, c. 2080-2010 B.C. It is not self-explanatory, but lists plots of irrigated arable land with quantities of barley for each. (A iku was a measure of area of land, about 3530 square meters; sila and gin were measures of capacity used for barley, the sila about .85 of a litre and a gin 1/60 of a sila.
Translation:
12 iku: 13 ½ sila, 5 gin each.
24 iku: 20 ½ sila each.
12 iku: 19 1/3 sila each.
12 iku 6 ½ sila each.
24 iku: 10 sila each.
17 ¼ iku: 5 sila each.
25 iku: 12 1/3 sila each.
24 iku: 9 ½ sila each.
26 iku: 2 2/3 sila each.
12 iku: 12 2/3 sila each.
14 iku: 4 ½ sila each.
14 iku: 8 sila 10 gin each.
18 iku: 2 5/6 sila each.
10 ¾ iku: (…….sila) eac
Field of Ashgi-amah.
Ilushu-re’i manager .
The background of this document is the following. Arable land had to be irrigated, and that meant communal direction. In fact most land was owned by the state, big temples, or big private land-owners. Since the state controlled the temples it was by far the largest land-owner, and it had a huge bureaucracy to manage the land. There were three well-used methods of exploiting the arable land for the state: (i) to work it with servants of the state, who had then to be paid in some form, (ii) to assign small plots to individual men who worked for the state in other capacities and who worked their plots privately and took the crops as wages, (iii) to lease out small plots to private men who worked them and at harvest time handed over an agreed percentage of the crops as rent for the past season.
This document offers statistics for one harvest in “the Field of Ashgi-amah”. Ashgi-amah is a personal name, but here it is the name of a piece of irrigated land, not of the owner. This piece of land had been divided into plots which had been cultivated and the barely measured at harvest. This is a statistical record since it gives the yield of each iku for each plot, but does not name the men who had cultivated each plot. That information would have been recorded elsewhere.
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 with 16 Lines of Sumerian Cuneiform The tablet is complete, with 13 lines on the obverse, three on the reverse, the first of these three a little damaged, the rest complete. The text is an administrative document from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, c. 2080-2010 B.C. It is not self-explanatory, but lists plots of irrigated arable land with quantities of barley for each. (A iku was a measure of area of land, about 3530 square meters; sila and gin were measures of capacity used for barley, the sila about .85 of a litre and a gin 1/60 of a sila.
Translation:
12 iku: 13 ½ sila, 5 gin each.
24 iku: 20 ½ sila each.
12 iku: 19 1/3 sila each.
12 iku 6 ½ sila each.
24 iku: 10 sila each.
17 ¼ iku: 5 sila each.
25 iku: 12 1/3 sila each.
24 iku: 9 ½ sila each.
26 iku: 2 2/3 sila each.
12 iku: 12 2/3 sila each.
14 iku: 4 ½ sila each.
14 iku: 8 sila 10 gin each.
18 iku: 2 5/6 sila each.
10 ¾ iku: (…….sila) eac
Field of Ashgi-amah.
Ilushu-re’i manager .
The background of this document is the following. Arable land had to be irrigated, and that meant communal direction. In fact most land was owned by the state, big temples, or big private land-owners. Since the state controlled the temples it was by far the largest land-owner, and it had a huge bureaucracy to manage the land. There were three well-used methods of exploiting the arable land for the state: (i) to work it with servants of the state, who had then to be paid in some form, (ii) to assign small plots to individual men who worked for the state in other capacities and who worked their plots privately and took the crops as wages, (iii) to lease out small plots to private men who worked them and at harvest time handed over an agreed percentage of the crops as rent for the past season.
This document offers statistics for one harvest in “the Field of Ashgi-amah”. Ashgi-amah is a personal name, but here it is the name of a piece of irrigated land, not of the owner. This piece of land had been divided into plots which had been cultivated and the barely measured at harvest. This is a statistical record since it gives the yield of each iku for each plot, but does not name the men who had cultivated each plot. That information would have been recorded elsewhere.