The image on the right is an earlier version of the pisan-dub-ba, here originating in the Early Dynastic IIIb period. To make presets easy to use, please choose a unqiue name. Medical recipe; Montserrat Museum, MM 479. 2900-2700 BC) field document on stone I, We have in an earlier series described some of the textual evidence documenting building construction in Mesopotamia. Highlights from the Yale Babylonian Collection. This first text is found on a cylindrical stone in the Swiss. The interpretation and order of reading of the three signs present on the tag are as yet unclear.
So also here, as we might already deduct from the structure of the numerical notations themselves. You are emailed once your preset is approved. IMPORTANT: Existing presets will not be replaced. The Ur III period was witness to many different forms of text artifacts. You can close the On the far right is Eas vizier, a two-faced follower called Usimu on his right with his hand raised towards Ea. An Old Sumerian administrative text detailing the distribution of rations to dependent workers and regular offerings to the temple by Eniggal, the majordomo; it was found in ancient Girsu and is dated to the ED IIIb period (2500-2340 BC) during the reign of Lugalanda.
2500-2340 BC) mace head with a dedication to a god on behalf of a governor of Lagash. IMPORTANT: Presets are manually approved. Tags of this type are rare in the Old Akkadian period, furthermore, the majority are in very poor condition. A rather important, but small group are clay, Lexical text with geographical section; Montserrat Museum, MM 859 + MM 860. The spherical shape of the ED IIIb has given way to a rectangular or "tablet" shape, consistent with "pisan-dub-ba" tags of the Ur III period. 2017.01.07: Added "Hex Code + Text" output option. This mace heads inscription describes Enlil, chief executive of the Sumerian pantheon and king of all lands, bestowing earthly rule to Lugalzegesi, king of the third dynasty of Uruk. Also changed layout. The text describes the amount of flour, per ban (~6 liters), baked into various types of bread for sacrificial offerings, in addition to various commodities for the temple, including beers, butter oils, dates, apples (or apricots), birds, fish and fish eggs, garlic, roasted barely, and turnips (or crushed grapes). In fact, basing ourselves on the archaeological context of tags and administrative tablets, we are not entirely certain that they hung from their respective baskets and associated texts at all, but this seems the most logical reconstruction of ancient bookkeeping records. window and come back, and they'll still be here, but no one will see them accept people who use These texts date to the Early Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1900 BC) commemorates the building of a temple for god Lugalbanda and his spouse Ninsun by Sn-kid, king of Uruk and king of Amnanum. a text document, and whatever else you can think of. An Old Akkadian (2340-2200 BC) mace head from Ur with a dedicatory inscription; said to be made of aragonite. Though its archival function is similar to the two administrative texts pictured here, its method of storage and its original archival environment are yet unclear.
Neo-Babylonian text with land register from Uruk; Montserrat Museum, MM 220b. This private house was in a well-located area of Babylon, not far off of the famous ziqqurat of Marduk, the Etemenanki. The Adda seal contains various Gods and Goddesses including a unidentified hunting god on the far left holding a bow and arrow next to the goddess Ishtar who is winged and armed with an axe and mace rising over her shoulders while holding a bush that is presumably a group of dates. They stay around in your browser A stone mace head from the Old Akkadian period (2340-2200 BC), during the reign of Naram-Sin, king of Akkad. 2100-2000 BC) and records a court decision following the contestation, by an officer, of a slave purchase by one of his men. A variety of output formats are available, though you will most likely want to generate HTML color codes. How did scribal schoolmasters and temple personnel take inventory of the literary and hymnal compositions stored in their archives? While it is nearly identical in content, its form may be seen to be quite different. Of course the inherent mathematical beauty in field calculation was not lost on ancient Babylonians. 2013.04.28: Altered the footer and some small edits. We pause for a moment on this Earth Day to reflect on the Anthropocene then, and with climatology, science, and truth itself under increasingly specious assault by elected Republican officials in Washington, now. The image on the left is a literary catalog of the Old Babylonian period. To the upper left of the tablets reverse surface (pictured at the bottom), you will find the same GAN, An ED I-II (ca. The wife of the governor partook in the administrative structure by presiding over the household of the woman (=divine Baba). With its striking and uniformly deep, round and conical impressions, the text was early on recognized as an account containing calculations of fields. An Old Sumerian administrative text detailing the sum of various goods entered by different administrative officials and concluding with Dudu, temple administrator; it was found in ancient Girsu and is dated to the ED IIIb period (2500-2340 BC) in the 7th year of Lugalanda. Basket labels of the Ur III period show a number of developments that hint at a shift in how they were attached, if at all, to baskets containing groups of administrative texts. A calcite mace head found in the Ur excavations and dated to the Old Akkadian period (2340-2200 BC), during the reign of Rimush. these into the app elsewhere. However, you may want to export your like an email signature. In the first column (we are reading the text as its ancient scribe would have, An Uruk III period (ca. Already in the first phase of writing development, the Uruk IV period dating to ca. Basket labels of this period may be identified by their initial text line (pisan-dub), single string-hole running through the vertical axis, and the impression of a reed matting pattern on the tags reverse. Various fragments and new joins; Montserrat Museum. The. 2013.08.25: Added a bunch of color presets.
This small tablet in the Montserrat Museum dates to the Neo-Babylonian period (ca. Early Old Babylonian royal inscription by Sn-kid; Montserrat Museum, MM 710-8. Despite their rarity and issues of preservation, the Old Akkadian "pisan-dub" tags represent an evolution in form while preserving the function of the preceding period. While the largest area notation on the obverse of this text was 1x10 plus some number of bur, An Uruk III period (ca. In 1971, Richard Caplice published texts in the Kuyunjik collection of the British Museum that are classified as belonging to the genre of. Dark colors can help you give off a certain moodiness while lighter colors are easy on the eye. 2400 BC) is among the many thousands of cuneiform tablets in the. The current slide initiates a number of entries dedicated to the bookkeeping involved in the management of the agricultural fields whose harvests fed the city craftsmen and laborers and therefore ultimately made the construction and maintenance of such buildings possible. Middle Hittite fragments; Montserrat Museum, MM 1501 and MM 1502. The text describes the allocation of barley rations to the female slaves and children (. This composition is well attested in the Hittite documentation (see the list of available manuscript in the. IMPORTANT: Copy this text and save it somewhere. Ishtar is standing above the sun God Shamashs head who has rays coming out of him and is holding onto a blade while emerging between two square-shaped mountains. Cuneiform texts speak, in understated tones, of ecological destruction brought upon the earth and its inhabitants by pre-scientific populations in a region itself only some millennia removed from the end of the last ice age and the natural flooding of the part of the Mesopotamian foreland basin that is now the Persian Gulf. However, she also conducted her own personal exchanges with members of other ruling families. This proto-cuneiform text artifact is a possible precursor of the well known tablet cataloging system best exemplified by the late 3rd millennium BC pisan-dub-ba basket tags widely employed by Ur III period accountants. In this text, Baranamtara (literally dais-of-fate), wife of Lugalanda, exchanges amounts of tin and bronze in return for dolls made of boxwood (Sumerian. 3200-3000 BC) field document from Jemdet Nasr III, Lets have a look at the first two of these calculated fields. Interestingly, this text presents an instance of.
A stone mace head from Old Akkadian (2340-2200 BC) Kish dedicated to Ea. Scribes of the Old Babylonian period (ca. This mace head is dedicated to the moon god, Sn, and proclaims Rimush King of Kish. This title was once held by Mebaragesi and Mesilim in the Early Dynastic period, and was later revived by Sargon to display his rightful rule over the southern Mesopotamian city-states. Late Babylonian manuscript of the first tablet of the Atra-hasis Epic; Montserrat Museum, MM 818. 3200-3000 BC) field document from Jemdet Nasr IV, The rule of archaic accountants was, eventual summations were reserved for the opposite surface of the clay tablets whose obverse surface carried individual transaction numbers. Achaemenid letter; Montserrat Museum, MM 504. 2000-1900 BC). Manuscript of the Akkadian poem "Ium and Erra"; Montserrat Museum, MM 837. Tags were formed by placing clay around a piece of rope attached to the lid of the basket. This "pisan-dub" tag comes from the Old Akkadian period. It could be noted that all male figures in the Adda seal have growing beards while the females do not. That high priest of Jemdet Nasr had the use of fields corresponding to 155 bur, An Uruk III period (ca. Court decision following the contestation of a slave purchase; Montserrat Museum, MM 495. To the right of the sun god is the water god Ea (Enki) who has one foot on a mountain and one arm reaching out to a eagle that is presumed to be the Zu bird who stole the tablets of dynasty. The individual fields ranged in size from 2.5 to 10 iku, and, as we have seen in earlier examples, the fields were totaled on the tablet reverse, recording: 3 buru 7 bur, The Early Dynastic IIIa period (ca. They carry many physical features, which make them stand out compared to legal and administrative texts of the Ur III or early Old Babylonian period. How did ancient scribes keep track of the often overwhelming number of administrative documents created by a large and very complex bureaucracy? The placement of the hole, here running through the longer surface so that, hanging like a pendant, the artifact would have presented its inscription in its natural writing and reading orientation, is like that of later exemplars; Uruk IV tags, though, had just the one hole through, while Ur III pisan-dub-ba had two entry holes, with the twine tied to a knot and encased within the tagbut also so that, hanging, the inscription was read in lines from top to bottom. The God Ea (Enki) is usually depicted with water and fish flowing from his body.
The Kish excavators were, in 1925, made aware of random finds of decidedly archaic cuneiform tablets at the nearby mound know as Jemdet Nasr (hillock of [Sheikh] Nr; its ancient name is unknown), so that Mackay helped to organize a 1926 campaign to Jemdet Nasr, led by the Oxford Assyriologist Stephen Langdon. These seals were used to mark ownership in various places such as storerooms where the seal would be imprinted on the door or part of the room. This mace head is dedicated to the god ulaga by ala-Baba, on behalf of her husband, the governor. Notwithstanding any difference from the previous entries, this mace head presents the standard structure of , A stone mace head from Nimrud, dated to the neo-Assyrian period (911-612 BC) from the reign of, Among the many temples that Assurnasirpal II built at Nimrud, the one mentioned on this mace head is Kidmuru, a temple devoted to Ishtar, the queen and great mistress (Akkadian. 2900-2700 BC) field document on stone II, We warn our students to avoid speculative identifications of the most ancient forms of cuneiform signs based solely on pictographic similarities. A best practice is to prefix your preset name with an author handle, ex: "DMX - Sunset" or "RZA; Moonglow". 3350 BCperhaps some two centuries before the first fields described in this series were mapped out in Jemdet Nasrapparent masters of the scribal art began in their spare time to play with the numbers of their day jobs. We may imagine that this in turn represented the first, unstructured stage of settlement in the riverine south. The Sumerian literary composition known nowadays as Instructions of uruppag is one of the few literary texts, whose ancestors can be traced back into the Early Dynastic period. The second sign, read in Sumerian GAN, An ED I-II (ca. These include seven clay tablets, five clay barrels, two stone bowls, and a figurine (I. M. Rowe & M. Molina, Cuneiform forgeries in the. A stone mace head from the ED IIIb period (ca. Pictographically, the sign GIR3 represents the head of a bovine; the sign SANGA, a title designating a temple administrator, is thought to pictographically represent a talleying board with attached token box; and the sign DUB, a Sumerian reading designating a clay tablet in later times, may have represented a type of woven basket. 2014.01.08: Added a search box to the preset list.
Legal document dating to the Old Babylonian period; Montserrat Museum, MM 830. The following series presents a short overview of cuneiform documents, often in the form of tags, that were developed by ancient scribes in order to keep track of other cuneiform documents. At 37 1/2 bur, VAT 12656 registers altogether 104 allotment fields distributed among active members of the Fara elite community, including merchants, boatmen, smiths, carpenters, brewers, fisheries managers and other professions. 3200-3000 BC) field document from Jemdet Nasr V, Given the number and measures treated in the previous four entries, we can speculate about the form of these various fields, viewed from above. List of plants and drugs for treatment of illnesses; Montserrat Museum, MM 501. The relative size of the area controlled by the priest-king of Jemdet Nasr is indicated above the central canal. The fragment originates from Babylon and originally belonged most likely to a private "library" in a Neo-Babylonian house (see O. Pedersn, ADOG 25 [2005], 279ff.). The seal is only about 3.9cm in height and were often carried around. This stone mace head, possibly from Girsu, is decorated with a lion-headed eagle known as the Imdugud or Anzu bird, shown clenching a pair of lions in its talons. Such cylinder seals were used to mark ownership on rooms and the Adda seal has various God and Goddesses depicted on it. Let us then attempt a translation of this text dating to ca.
3350-3200 BC). As temple administrator (Sumerian. As mentioned in the previous entry, Semitic. Lugalzegesi was governor of Umma province; however, he rose to power when he overthrew the king of Kish, Ur-Zababa, and subsequently conquered the major Sumerian city-states of southern Mesopotamia. This tablet would have contained several compositions (for the latest edition see I. Rowe, The Montserrat Fragment of the Instructions of Ur-Ninurta,, Sumerian fragment of the Instructions of uruppag dating to the Old Babylonian period; Montserrat Museum, MM 477+MM 864. The, In 2007, the Swedish historian of science, Though less subtle than exercises with unexpected calculations of artificially large fields, many Babylonian texts still make a strong impression on the reader with their almost manic attention to detail. 2013.08.25: Added the "Submit as Preset" option and Result Display option. 3200-3000 BC) field document from Jemdet Nasr II, Indeed, after Langdons 1928 publication of the tablet in volume 7 of the series, An Uruk III period (ca. 1400-1100 BC). Of these, the version from Tell Abu Salabikh (ca. The central image, a pisan-dub-ba or basket tag from the Ur III period, would have hung from a basket containing a number of administrative receipts that were grouped based upon varying criteria. 2500-2350 BC,) dated to the reign of Lugalzagesi. local presets before you do this.
An ED IIIb text dating to the 3rd year of Lugalanda, which describes an exchange of gifts between the wives of governors.
Among the most significant of the discoveries from the work at the small settlement is the text pictured here. The Akkadian poem known as "Ium and Erra" is, as Andrew George put it, "a portrayal of violence (), how it needs to be recognized and feared as potentially the most powerful of forces. This cone dating to the Early Old Babylonian period (ca. The sign to the left, read in Sumerian ki and meaning place or settlement, will have been a representation of meandering waterways that fed southern Mesopotamias life-sustaining canals. IMPORTANT: Presets are saved to the web browser you're using NOW. 2013.04.21: Altered the interface to work with mobile devices. You can use the "Import" function to import 2300 BC from the ancient city of Sippar, modern day southern Iraq. The collection of the Montserrat Museum holds several fragments containing Middle Hittite texts. This mathematical table of field measures from the Early Dynastic IIIb period (ca. The approximately sixty tablets that can be assigned to this house date to the second half of the first millennium BC and mainly to the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods. Tags of this type originate in the Early Dynastic IIIb period and continue to be used through the end of the Ur III period. 11. An Old Sumerian administrative text concerning the delivery of fish, dated to the ED IIIb period (2500-2340 BC), 3rd year of ruler Urukagina. Note the absence of the woven impression on the reverse of the tag, suggesting that labels of this period were no longer pressed onto their baskets. MM 1501 on the left-hand side joins to Bo. An Early Dynastic IIIb (ca. List of body-parts; Montserrat Museum, MM 502. The present text, part of the collection of the Oriental Insitute of the University of Chicago, appears to register on the one surface a rounded field measurement of 10 bur, An Uruk III period (ca.
Other Old Akkadian examples indicate that the method by which the tags were attached to their baskets had also changed. The clay was then pressed onto the lid, shaped into a dome, and inscribed. This damaged mace head's inscription has been partially reconstructed from an Old Babylonian. Situated at the top of the mace head is an, VAT 9552 is a well-preserved fragment of the third tablet of the series, This detail of VAT 8875 deals with lexical entries regarding the seal (Akkadian, We can marvel at the mathematical skills of Babylonian scribes, but the pre-scientific populations of ancient Mesopotamia had little basis to understand the. 2) = 15,631.25 sar (remembering that 1 sar = 1 ninda, Ur III period (ca. You can use the different designs to help show off your personality or to just pimp out something A marble mace head from Sippar dated to the reign of Manishtusu of the Old Akkadian period (2340-2200 BC). Both also, though seemingly abstract, have concrete pictographic referents. Peter Damerow and Bob Englund drove from Berlin to Heidelberg in the spring of 1985 to collate Uruk texts in preparation of the publication of their chapter on proto-cuneiform number sign systems that appeared in Nissen & Green. It is dedicated to the Lord of the Netherworld, Nergal, on behalf of Abi-sare, the Amorite king, and Arad-Utu, the mace heads engraver. Montserrat Museum holds a larger collection of royal inscriptions that commemorate building projects by the ruler Sinkashid. Old Babylonian legal texts are easy to recognise. According to the. When compared to its ED IIIb and Old Akkadian predecessors, we note a number of developments in the form. 2100-2000 BC) surveyors were known as rope-men. In an earlier series of, Whoever has left Baghdad in an old Rover with concrete suspension, in search of a southern Iraqi excavation site, manned only with a sketched map done on an envelope the night before, will marvel at the comparable attention to geographic details found on many ancient Babylonian documents. Rimush inherited this title, including the expanse of the Akkadian Empire from his successful father, therefore making him the second king to rule. This tag was excavated at Uruk (modern Warka) in southern Mesopotamia, and is now in the collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. This mace head is possibly from Larsa, a city that shared political relations with Isin and competed for territory before the consolidation of power in Mesopotamia by Hammurapi in Babylon. 2200-2100 BC) during the reign of the governor Lugalirida. Fragment of the Instructions of Ur-Ninurta dating to the Middle Babylonian period; Montserrat Museum, MM 487b, This fragment in Montserrat Museum is a splinter of the obverse of a tablet dating to the Middle Babylonian period (ca. This is a typical example of a pisan-dub-ba from the Ur III period (2100-2000 BC). Text type, owner, and accounting period of the receipts would be noted on the tag, allowing easy identification of the contents when a later review or collation of the account was to be performed. However, the areas that Sargon had conquered regained their autonomy upon Rimushs ascension to the throne. Manishtusu is the third king of the Old Akkadian period, well known for his. The collection of Montserrat Museum contains several cuneiform forgeries. 1900-1600 BC) composed a scholarly list of human body-parts beginning with Sumerian. Of particular interest in this text is the fact that it records three seed grain deliveries from two different storage facilities, their sum corresponding exactly to the amount of seed grain registered in the text considered in our previous two days slides. This newer form shows two string-holes on its upper edge, suggesting that it may have been formed around a knot instead of having a rope pass completely through its vertical axis. until you clear them. 3200-3000 BC) field document from Jemdet Nasr I, Ernest Mackay, a student of Sir Flinders Petrie, is best known for his excavations of the great Indus civilization at Mohenjo-Daro, but he is most dear to cuneiformists for his 1920s work at the massive mound of Kish in the waist of ancient Mesopotamia. The simple answer is they created labels and catalogues.
The oath taken by the slave himself established the legal rights of the buyer. Neo-Babylonian manuscript of a ritual regarding the well; Montserrat Museum, MM 889. 2600 BC) is best known through the clear graphic style of the scribes from Fara, ancient uruppakand as a paleographic transition stage between the pictography of the archaic eras, and the increasing sign abstraction of the latter half of the 3, Calculating Jemdet Nasr barley harvests II, The issue of ancient bookkeepers making seeding and harvest predictions was not idle speculation. The term pisan-dub-ba (basket of tablets) has come to designate administrative tags that, as the moniker states, identified accounting texts gathered within reed or wooden baskets. This fragmented mace head only preserves part of the. This tablet in the collection of Montserrat Museum (published as MVN 18, 321) dates to the Ur III period (ca. 2600-2500 BC; Imprint from a Greenstone cylinder seal from ca. We expect that the larger feeder canals led to a second main canal that carried excess water on to the next set of irrigated fields. The institutional archive of the Eanna temple in Uruk consists of approximately 8,000 texts (see the remarks in Jursa. 626-539 BC). Violence can eliminate even the order ordained by the gods and sweep away in its frenzy all the hopes and accomplishments of civilization" (A. R. George.
Also everyone in the Adda seal is wearing the multiple-horned head dresses which symbolizes their presence as Gods or deities. 363 (Istanbul Museum) and contains a text known as the "Great Feast of Arinna" (CTH 634). Within the nine years of his reign, he reconquered southern Mesopotamia and Elam. It was published by F. Kcher in the fourth volume of. Originating from the ancient city of Adab, it is currently housed at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Possible Fake; Montserrat Museum, MM unn.
A second account from the Fara collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, deals similarly with allotment fields and their required seed grain. Early Old Babylonian royal inscriptions by Sn-kid; Montserrat Museum. the web browser you're using now (unless you use the import/export options). It is not always easy to catch them out in this fine game: we must pay attention to even the most damaged of ancient clay documents, such as this examplar from Uruk (excavation number W 19408,76+) now on permanent loan from the German Arcaheological Institute (Berlin) to Heidelberg University. According to the. The fields of the five named Jemdet Nasr officials are sketched below an idealized main canal in our map, each receiving irrigation water from feeder canals diverting flow from the main canal, and each of these certainly further characterized by a network of smaller canals and ditches that watered the crops. 3300 BC: Basket of accountant Bull.. This application allows you to generate color faded text that can be used to help decorate emails, webpages, profiles, a message board / forum post, A dedicatory stone mace head dated to the Lagash II period (ca. Like the later tags, it has a well-formed, rectangular shape, and it would have been formed around a piece of twine and hung, presumably from a shelf or basket. This exemplar comes from the Early Dynastic IIIb period (2500-2340 BC). However, the two signs highlighted here enjoyed an unbroken history of use in Babylonian documents, remaining essentially unchanged both in their graphic form, as well as in their context within cuneiform texts. It is now assumed that this fragment originally belonged to a six- or eight-column tablet with a total of approximately 320 lines. An administrative tag from the Uruk IV period (ca. This is hinted at by the disappearance of the woven patterns and a change in the way that the string was incorporated within the tag. A small ED IIIb text dating to the 1st year of Lugalanda, describing Baranamtara overseeing trade with Elam. A stone mace head from the Early Babylonian period (2000-1800 BC), after the collapse of the Ur III dynasty in southern Mesopotamia.