Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet

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:

‘It is an administrative document from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, dated to the second year of Ibbi-Sin, last king of the dynasty, c. 2027 BC. It is a list of outgoings from the official stores of grain and grain products.

Translation:

30 sila of bread, 9 sila of date cake, 6 sila of oil bread? For the king’s eshesh festival. 4 gur 13 sila of beer. 4 gur 23 sila of bread. 7 sila of date cake. 20 sila of barley. (For) the king’s messengers and disbursements. 4 gur of beer. The slave girl weavers with Ali-lissu, 150 sila of beer. The slave girl oil pressers, the slave girl millers and the slave girls of the animal fattening house. 18 gur 280 sila of white bread. 18 gur 270 sila of date cake. 18 gur 250 sila of dates. 2 gur 180 sila of fine flour. The slaves of (the goddess) Ninhursag when cloth and wool rations were received. 1 gur 276 sila of beer. 288 sila of bread. The porters 6 gur 240 sila of bread. Men of the….official. 4 gur 270 sila of bread. Fodder for the palace lion and dogs: 52 in number. Disbursements: accounts for beer and bread. Adad-rabi, manager. Month: festival of Shulgi. Year: the high priestess of Inanna of Uruk was chosen by divination. Left edge: Ishar-ramash, Ali-lissu.

This gives a nice picture of the character of the royal court (or a branch of it) with its various dependents. The measures used are those of capacity: the sila (about .85 of a litre) and the gur (= 300 sila). It is never explained how bread was measured in this way but perhaps the flour was the thing measured. It is interesting to see that there was a captive lion and dogs in the court, but one wonders how the lion was made to eat bread.’ – (AM.0332)