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. His scanned
analysis is presented here. This is an
extremely rare text recording the making of
a statue of the third king of the Ur dynasty,
Amar-Suena. Kings were accorded divine
status in Sumerian society and this may be
the reason for the present document.
Professor Lambert’s translation is provided
below:
Clay tablet, 62x47mm., with a total of 17 lines of
Sumerian cuneiform on obverse and reverse. An
administrative document from the period of the
Third Dynasty of Ur, dated to the 9th year of
Shu-Sin, fourth king of the dynasty, c. 2029 B.C.
It is a rare and important tablet, and it is thus all
the more to be regretted that not everything can
be read. The scribe rolled the surface of the
tablet with his cylinder seal after he ad written it,
and in doing so obscured many of the signs. In
addition there is some surface corrosion and one
rejoined patch. The obverse is most affected,
the
reverse much less so. The tablet is a record of
the making of a statue of the third king of the
dynasty, Amar-Suena, father of the then reigning
king. It is well known that these kings of the
Third Dynasty of Ur were accorded divine status
even in their lifetimes, and this may be the
reason for the present document:
Translation
2 . . . . s
5 carpenters
1 leather worker: for 1 day to make a statue of
the . . . king in the . . . temple
When they took the statue of Amar-Suena fom
the inspection podium to the . . . temple, it was
thanks to Puta-padda, thanks to Lu-
Ninshuburaka and thanks to Nanna-dalla, metal
workers of the king
Month: barley harvest
Year: Shu-Sin, king, built the temple of Shara in
Umma
It is well known from later periods that the
making of divine statues was a very religious
work, not simply craftsmanship, and this takes
up back to Sumerian times. Though we have
translated the Sumerian alam as “statue”, as it
often is, it can also be “statuette”, and it may
have been made of stone, wood, ivory or metal,
but the mention of three metal workers suggests
here metal, at least for the most of the body.
