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:
‘The tablet dates to the Third Dynasty of Ur
and is dated to the 9th year of Shu-Sin, the
fourth king of the dynasty, c. 2029 B.C. The
text is an administrative document: a listing of
materials meant for a refurbishing of a temple:
Translation
[…] …. of a beam: its weight 50 shekels. 2
inscribed tablets of algames-stone: weight 1
mina 13 shekels. 2 reed mats, their outer
surfaces coated with bitumen: 2 cubits long, 1
cubit wide. To the account of the temple area
of the temple of Nin-isina. Month: festival of
(the god) Lisi. Year: Shu-Sin, king of Ur, built
the temple of Shara in Uma.
A shekel was a weight, not a coin, about 8
grams. 60 shekels made one mina. Some of
the inscriptions can be read: Lu-………., Scribe,
son of Lu-Ababa.
This is a typical example of the bureaucracy of
this dynasty: every little item of spending on
official purposes had to be recorded in writing
and filed in clay boxes.’
