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:

‘The tablet is an administrative document from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, dated o the 3rd year of Shu-Sin, fourth king the dynasty c. 2035 B.C. It lists the rations paid out to official messengers and while hardly any line of this part is complete, the general sense is clear: eight messengers are named, each after a statement of the rations issued. These are soup and fish. The first line cannot be read, but the third line, beginning the second man’s entry, starts “2 sila”. A sila was a measure of capacity, about .85 of a litre, and from the rest of the document, it is clear that the whole line will have read: “2 sila or soup, 2 fish”. The following six messengers are better preserved, and each gets only “1 sila of soup, 1 fish”. The person receiving the rations is not only identified by name, but also by a title, but only the 6th is well enough preserved to be clear: “[king’s] messenger”, thought the 4th seems extremely probably to be read “cup-bearer”. After such entries for second, fifth, sixth and eight messengers, there is an explanation of their purposes of travel, but no single case is fully clear. However, such entries for the second, fifth and eighth all say: “when they went [……..]”, while the entry for the sixth says “when he went [……..]”, some of the messengers travelled in groups. The date at the end is the best preserved part of the whole: Month: the plow. Year: after the boat of (the god) Enki, “The Ibex of the Apsu” was caulked. 12th day.

Since Sumer was criss-crossed with irrigation canals, travel was most often by water, and gods had their ceremonial barges for this purpose. The year was named after what was considered the most important event, but until this had been decided, the previous year’s name was repeated with “after” inserted.”