Description:

Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, Middle Babylonian Period, ca. 1595 to 1155 BCE. A cuneiform tablet (or "biscuit") with dense lines of ancient writing carved into both of its faces, with one side almost completely covered, the other with a few lines. This lists fields, with their owners and supervisors. The text is dated to the year 5, with no king mentioned. On the reverse, plows are listed for a polder and for Dur-Enlille. Size: 2.25" W x 4.5" H (5.7 cm x 11.4 cm)

This cuneiform tablet is one of the roughly 2 million known; of these, between 30,000 and 100,000 have been translated. The earliest translations came in 1836 from the work of French scholar Eugene Burnouf and by the 1850s multiple scholars were able to produce similar translations, meaning the language had been deciphered. Similar to many other known cuneiform tablets, this one is concerned with property. Cuneiform tablets seem to have been used mainly as a way of tabulating economic concerns. Although it might be more romantic to imagine that these tablets discussed the doings of kings and gods, from a historical standpoint, it is much more interesting to learn about the daily transactions of humanity's first great urban center.

Provenance: private East Coast, USA collection

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#132505

  • Condition: Intact, with some light wear on surface.

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June 20, 2018 7:00 AM MDT
Louisville, CO, US

Artemis Fine Arts

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