The extraordinary Cuneiform archives which survive from Ancient Mesopotamia stand as a testament not only to the lifestyle of the rich and powerful, but also the administrative functions of the palaces and temples, and of the importance of ordinary people in keeping the whole show running. The palace was not merely a residence of a King and his family, they were centres of the entire community, forming an important role in the redistribution of goods, most notably foodstuffs, which were taken in taxes from the surrounding farmlands, to the urban populations. These palaces and temples required huge amounts of material – human capital, grain, barley, water, cheese, wine, meat, legumes – both to feed their own inhabitants, and to provide for the surrounding townspeople. And, of course, huge amounts of material were needed to dedicate to the gods in the great public sacrifices, which dominated the calendar, and became an important indicator of the power of the priest-kings, considered gods on Earth themselves.

The incredibly inventive Mesopotamians probably were the first to put ideas into writing, adopting a series of small wedges pressed into wet clay in order to make letters, which represented one, two, or three phonemes (uniliteral, biliteral or triliteral signs), or even entire words, in a complex written system which generated the modern Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic. The power of the written word was recognised early, both as a means of propaganda for the rulers of the various city-states, and in promoting the running of an orderly kingdom. The first full-length written narrative tale, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was perhaps the greatest expression of this Cuneiform culture, which spanned numerous peoples of the Near East before the conquests of Alexander. This same script was used to write the Sumerian, Akkadian, Elamite, Urukan, Babylonian and Old Persian languages, and was even adopted for writing certain passages of Egyptian.

This remarkable tablet gives the accounts of an important institution, a temple or more likely a palace. The difference between the two was minimal – both consumed vast resources, and both employed enormous numbers of people – but the presence in this account of feed for a menagerie of lions is indicative of the palace itself. The King would have ritually hunted lions as a demonstration of his strength. Additionally, lions would have been the ultimate prestige item, demonstrating the monarch’s ability to bend nature to his will. This little tablet also has an indicator of how such tablets were handled in daily life. A small hole in the upper part probably originally housed a string, from which the tablet would have been hung. This may have been during writing, to allow a palace official to wander around the grounds taking notes, or more likely was to tie this tablet into a kind of book, recording the accounts of an entire year in one place. Among the various costs included in these accounts are the wages of the slave girls in various parts of the palace, of king’s messengers, and for a clearly enormous festival known as Eshesh. The disbursements are organised by a named palace official, Adad-rabi. The measurements included in the note are the sila and the gur. The sila was some 0.85 litres, or 3 1/2 cups. The gur was a superlative measure, amounting to 300 sila.

Translation: [Obverse] 30 sila of bread, 9 sila of cake, 6 sila of ‘oil bread’. At the Eshesh-festival, for the King, 8 gur, 232 sila of beer, 9 gur 153 sila of bread, 60 sila of cake:
A king’s messenger: two disbursements of 8 gur of beer: the weaving slave-girls with Ali-liss 1 gur, 240 sila of beer: the oil-pressing slave-girls, the grinding slave-girls and the fattening-house slave-girls 1 gur , 288 sila of beer, 294 sila of bread:
[Reverse] The porter: 15 gur, 180 sila of beer; the assessors and […] 4 gur, 270 sila of bread: fodder for palace lions and dogs, 50 of the Disbursements, accountings…..
Adad-rabi, manager. Month: Shuniga Year: the high priestess of Inanna of Uruk was chosen by divination
[Left edge] [….] Puzur-Ningi […], Lu-Bab

Translation by the late Prof Wilfred G. Lambert, FBA
Professor Emeritus of Assyriology, University of Birmingham