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HOME :
Near Eastern Art :
Cuneiform Tablets : Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet
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Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet - AM.0123
Origin: Eastern Mediterranean
Circa: 2029
BC
Dimensions:
1.97" (5.0cm) high
x 1.73" (4.4cm) wide
Collection: Ancient Writings
Medium: Terracotta
£9,000.00
Location: Great Britain
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| Description |
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:
‘This is a nearly square tablet, rolled
with the scribe’s cylinder seal over
the finished writing, which has
obscured some of the text without
allowing the seal inscription to be
read. It is an administrative
document dated to the 9th year of
Shu-Sin, fourth king of the Third
Dynasty of Ur, c. 2029 B.C., and to a
month not certainly belonging to the
known calendars of Sumer. The
document refers to baskets and their
content (apparently offerings to
gods):
Translation:
20 fish baskets, 30 sila
capacity…..sesame ……he filled,
offerings….In Nippur, via Mr Kurbi-
Adad, soldier. Month: festival of
Shulgi. Year: Shu-Sin, king of Ur,
built the temple of (the god) Shara
of Umma.
The sila was a measure of capacity,
about .85 of a litre.’ - (AM.0123)
- (AM.0123)
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