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 it’s
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
decipherment and translation of
cuneiform, to
examine and process the information on
these
tablets. His analysis is presented
here.
Clay Tablet, 65 x 45 mm, with 16 lines
of
Sumerian Cuneiform
This is almost perfectly preserved and
every sign
is legible. The ancient scribe erased
the final line
he wrote, which may have been the
date. The
tablet is an administrative document
from the
period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and
concerns
weaving. Translation:
29 full-rations slave girls
60 half-rations slave girls
Month: the plow, end of 7th day, from
Year: the high priestess of
Eridu was chosen
To: Month: Shunigal
Year: the high priestess of
Nanna of Karzida
was installed
Years: 2
Months: 11 and 23 days
Their rations: 10200: 213 ½ slave
girls per diem
5 complete cloth beams, 20……
Ur-Hendursag, clerk of the
weavers,
received
From Puzur-Adad, foreman of
the weavers
This is a monthly kind of balance
sheet for an
ancient Sumerian textile factory,
which employed
slave girls for most of the labour. It
was
compiled at the end of a calendar
month (7 and
23 add up to 30: the days of a
Sumerian month,
which was lunar). The calculations
require
comment. The first year-name is that
of the 8th
year of Amar-Sin, third king of the
Third Dynasty
of Ur, c. 2029 BC, and the second year
name is
that of the 9th year of the same king,
so c. 2028
BC. So two years are involved, but by
our method
of subtracting the period would be one
year only.
And in fact the period was less than
12 months:
only 11 months 23 days. The totals
however are
not explained. One may guess that
10200 means
that number of silas of barley, the
normal
payment in such factories, and the
total stated
was no doubt obtained simply from
records of
the quantity of barley issued by the
paymaster,
but how the 213 ½ was obtained is not
clear. The
half is well known in such documents,
and is
easily explicable as a statistic from
“full-time
equivalents” being calculated from
many part-
time workers. The cloth beams and the
“20……”
(a word of unknown meaning, but
definitely part
of a loom) show that these slave girls
wore out
the looms from time to time.
- (LSO.1031)
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