UR III Administrate Tablet on Wool, Sheep and Lamb

£895.00

An administrative cuneiform tablet fragment from the UR III period. Cuneiform scripts have been incised on the obverse with traces on the reverse from an individual to be named ‘chief herdsman’. The tablet is dated to the 46th year of Shulgi which is 2049BC. The text depicts an account on wool.

‘Dated to the reign of King Shulgi or Ur, year 46.

26 ½ minas of wool (from) Ur-Ishtaran.

 

Year(named) : (the city) Kimash was destroyed.

28 male sheep, 10 lambs, 10 male lambs,

Ther wool: 1 talent 16 minas (given by?)

Ur-Ishtaran, chief herdsman.

42 minas of wwool remainder of the zuiga

(a destination of sheep) (from)

Lugal-eshrani(?) son of X-ib-ni,

(reverse in middle is year name, damaged and unreadable except for)

The year (named):

Date: Circa 2049BC
Provenance: Ex London dealer collection, acquired 1980s-2000s.
Condition: Very fine condition, some wear and flaking to the reverse due to age.

SOLD

SKU: LD-795BL Category: Tag:

The Ur III period is noted by Assyriologists and ancient historians for vast amount of surviving administrative and economic documents preserved on clay tablets. Most of the tablets were quite small and consists of 10-20 lines of text, recording receipts and disbursements of resources or labour. Due to the considerable amount of administrative texts which allowed scholars to reconstruct daily life of the Ur III period, the period is often considered a model of the early developments of bureaucracy and state control.

Weight 86.7 g
Dimensions L 7.2 x W 4.2 cm
Culture

Pottery and Porcelain

Region

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