Tablets

Everything written on clay, which is where this civilisation is loudest. Literary tablets, school exercises, omen compendia, mathematical tablets like Plimpton 322, letters, the map of the world, and the Flood Tablet that George Smith read in 1872. But the honest proportion matters: the overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform is administrative, receipts and ration lists and accounts of barley, and that is the real texture of the record. Also the modern life of tablets: being read, conserved, digitised, seized and repatriated.

Part of Mesopotamia

137 moments in this segment.

1. 3100 BC - Cuneiform tablet: administrative account with entries concerning malt and barley groats. 3100 to 2900 BC, probably from Uruk (modern Warka). The earliest tablets from Uruk IV, roughly 3350 to 3200 BC, are accounting notations recording commodities and quantities. They do not encode Sumerian grammar, so writing that can record connected speech is a later development. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gift, 1988.
2. 2350 BC - Cuneiform tablet- distribution of copper knives MET vs62 70 95.jpeg (color). ), 2350 BC. Cuneiform tablet; Clay-Tablets-Inscribed. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
3. 2051 BC - Cuneiform tablet case impressed with cylinder seal, for cuneiform tablet 86.11.249a: receipt of a kid. 2051 BC, probably from Drehem (ancient Puzrish-Dagan). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
4. 2051 BC - Cuneiform tablet: receipt of a kid. 2051 BC, probably from Drehem (ancient Puzrish-Dagan). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
5. 2040 BC - Cuneiform tablet: receipt of straw. 2040 BC, probably from Drehem (ancient Puzrish-Dagan). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
6. 2040 BC - Cuneiform tablet: receipt of reeds. 2040 BC, probably from Drehem (ancient Puzrish-Dagan). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
7. 2029 BC - Cuneiform tablet impressed with cylinder seal: shipment of barley. 2029 BC, probably from Umma (modern Jokha). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
8. 2029 BC - Cuneiform tablet impressed with cylinder seal: balanced account of barley. 2029 BC, probably from Lagash (modern al Hiba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
9. 1780 BC - Cuneiform tablet impressed with two cylinder seals: loan of barley. 1780 BC, probably from Dilbat. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
10. 1000 BC - Cuneiform tablet: lunar procedure text (?). (?), ca. late 1st millennium BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
11. 1000 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment, content uncertain. 1st millennium BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
12. 1000 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of Syllabary A. 1st millennium BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
13. 1000 BC - Cuneiform tablet: commentary on Enuma Anu Enlil, tablet 5. 1st millennium BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
14. 1000 BC - Cuneiform tablet: unidentified fragment. 1st millennium BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
15. 1000 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of school exercise tablet, Urra=hubullu, tablets 14, 20, 21. 1st millennium BC. Lexical series such as Urra equals hubullu are vast catalogues of trees, vessels, animals, stones and professions, copied for over two thousand years. They are the world's first reference works and they are how scribes learned. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
16. 1000 BC - Cuneiform tablet: hymn to Marduk. 1st millennium BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
17. 1000 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of Syllabary B. 1st millennium BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
18. 883 BC - Brick with inscription of Ashurnasirpal II MET DP247101. 883 BC. Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, capital under Ashurnasirpal II and the site of the Northwest Palace, the Nimrud ivories and the queens' tombs found by the Iraqi archaeologist Muzahim Mahmud Hussein between 1988 and 1990, a discovery usually left out of Western tellings. It was bulldozed in 2015, and it was the real catastrophe of that year, more than the Mosul Museum video.
19. 883 BC - Brick with inscription of Ashurnasirpal II MET DP249702. 883 BC. Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, capital under Ashurnasirpal II and the site of the Northwest Palace, the Nimrud ivories and the queens' tombs found by the Iraqi archaeologist Muzahim Mahmud Hussein between 1988 and 1990, a discovery usually left out of Western tellings. It was bulldozed in 2015, and it was the real catastrophe of that year, more than the Mosul Museum video.
20. 700 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a field lease. 7th to 4th century BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
21. 700 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of an accounting record (?). (?), ca. 7th to 4th century BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
22. 700 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a contract (?). (?), ca. 7th to 4th century BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
23. 700 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment. 7th to 4th century BC, probably from Babylon (modern Hillah). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
24. 700 BC - Cuneiform tablet: agreement regarding division of property. 7th to 4th century BC, probably from Babylon (modern Hillah). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
25. 700 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a contract involving a house. 7th to 4th century BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
26. 676 BC - Cuneiform prism describing the restoration of Babylon by Esarhaddon, stamped with Assyrian hieroglyphic inscription. 676 to 672 BC, probably from Babylon (modern Hillah). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
27. 626 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a promissory note for dates. 626 to 539 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
28. 625 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a quittance (?). (?), ca. 625 or 603 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
29. 606 BC - Cuneiform tablet: account of dates as imittu-rent, Ebabbar archive. 606 BC, probably from Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
30. 604 BC - Cuneiform tablet: account of delivery of halilu-tools, Ebabbar archive. 604 to 562 BC, probably from Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
31. 604 BC - Cuneiform cylinder: inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II commemorating the reconstruction of Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon. 604 to 562 BC, from Babylon (?). Etemenanki, the ziggurat of Babylon, is commonly identified with the Tower of Babel. The identification is a reasonable inference rather than an attested fact, and almost nothing of the structure survives above foundation level. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
32. 604 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of an account record (?). (?), ca. 604 to 562 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
33. 600 BC - Cuneiform tablet: promissory note for silver, Esagilaya archive. 6th century BC, probably from Babylon (modern Hillah). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
34. 586 BC - Cuneiform tablet: account of barley issue for a prebendary, Ebabbar archive. 586 BC, probably from Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
35. 580 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment, Ebabbar archive. 580 BC, from Sippar (?). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
36. 576 BC - Cuneiform tablet: account of barley for bird-fodder, Ebabbar archive. 576 BC, probably from Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
37. 575 BC - Cuneiform tablet: record of silver for supplies, Ebabbar archive. 575 BC, probably from Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
38. 569 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a promissory note for dates, Esagilaya archive. 569 BC, probably from Babylon (modern Hillah). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
39. 566 BC - Cuneiform tablet: account of barley as agricultural dues, Ebabbar archive. 566 BC, probably from Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
40. 558 BC - Cuneiform tablet: declaraton before witnesses (?), Esagilaya archive. 558 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
41. 556 BC - Cuneiform tablet: promissory note for cress and barley, Esagilaya archive. 556 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
42. 555 BC - Cuneiform tablet: promissory note for barley, Esagilaya archive. 555 to 539 BC, probably from Babylon (modern Hillah). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
43. 550 BC - Cuneiform tablet: promissory note for barley. 550 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
44. 549 BC - Cuneiform tablet: account of flour, Ebabbar archive. 549 BC, probably from Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
45. 544 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a hire contract. 544 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
46. 522 BC - Cuneiform tablet: list of workmen, Ebabbar archive. 522 to 486 BC, probably from Sippar (modern Tell Abu Habba). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
47. 522 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a receipt for silver. 522 to 486 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
48. 500 BC - Cuneiform tablet: fragment of an agreement concerning a dowry (?). (?), ca. late 5th century BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
49. 1800 - Plimpton 322
50. 1911 - Scheil dynastic tablet (1911). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
51. 1923 - Transcription of the Weld-Blundell Prism. Stephen Herbert Langdon (1876-1937) Published in 1923. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
52. 1923 - Translation of the Weld-Blundell Prism. Stephen Herbert Langdon (1876-1937) Published in 1923. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
53. 1925 - Meissner Babylonien und Assyrien clay map 1925. The Babylonian Map of the World, a clay tablet showing Babylon at the centre of a disc encircled by a bitter river. It is a schematic of a cosmology rather than a navigational map.
54. 2012-01-04 - Cuneiform Tablet Restoration
55. 2012-02-20 - Code Hammurabi - Ecriture. The writing on the Hammurabi stele examined at the Louvre. Most of the text concerns wages, prices, ox hire, irrigation, inheritance and debt; the retaliation clauses are a minority and are class-stratified, applying in kind between equals and in silver otherwise.
56. 2013-05-08 - Prof. Maynard Maidman | Ancient Iraqi Clay Documents | History. Maynard Maidman on ancient Iraqi clay documents. The Nuzi archives he worked on record family law and adoption practices in unusual detail for the fifteenth century BC.
57. 2013 - Epic of Gilgamesh Flood Tablet in Akkadian Cuneiform - Nate Loper (43494374962). The Flood Tablet, Tablet XI of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh, from the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, British Museum K 3375. George Smith identified the flood narrative and announced it in December 1872. The often-repeated story that he tore off his clothes on reading it traces to a colleague's recollection and is very likely dramatised.
58. 2013 - Sumerian economic tablet IAM Š1005. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
59. 2013-08-04 - ASTR 1P01, CLIP 17: Angles and the Babylonian Origin of Degree Measure. The Babylonian origin of degree measure explained. The sexagesimal system, counting in sixties, is why an hour has sixty minutes and a circle 360 degrees.
60. 2013-09-26 - Health Care and Epidemics in Antiquity: The Example of Ancient Mesopotamia. Health care and epidemics in antiquity, using Mesopotamia as the case. The Diagnostic Handbook, Sakikku, organises symptoms systematically, and Mesopotamian medicine ran alongside exorcism rather than in opposition to it.
61. 2013-10-16 - Writing Cuneiform. A short demonstration of writing cuneiform from the Getty. Signs are impressed rather than drawn, which is why the script becomes progressively more abstract as it moves away from its pictographic origins.
62. 2014-01-10 - Great Voyages: Gilgamesh: Journeys to the End of the World. A Penn Museum lecture on Gilgamesh as a journey narrative. Calling it the oldest story is not defensible; the honest description is the earliest surviving long narrative poem.
63. 2014-06-04 - Cuneiform: Irving Finkel & Jonathan Taylor bring ancient inscriptions to life. Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor read cuneiform inscriptions aloud in the British Museum. Akkadian is a Semitic language and can be pronounced with reasonable confidence; Sumerian, which has no known relatives, is read more cautiously.
64. 2014 - The Babylonian map of the world, from Sippar, Mesopotamia.. A close-up view of the. This partially broken clay tablet contains both cuneiform inscriptions and a unique map of the Mesopotamian world. Probably from Sippar, Mesopotamia, Iraq. 700-500 BCE. The British Museum, London.
65. 2014 - Inscribed brick of King Sargon (721-705 BC) - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC07032. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
66. 2014 - Samsuiluna cone (sikkatu) in Sumerian and Akkadian languages, c. 1749-1712 BC - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC07178. Exhibit in the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA. This work is old enough so that it is in the public domain. Photography was permitted in the museum without restriction.
67. 2014 - Shush Castle Darafsh (13). The Shush Castle in Shush , Iran. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
68. 2015 - Foundation Cone of Enlil-Bani.. The cuneiform inscriptions on this foundation cone mention the building of the temple of the god Numushda in the city of Kiritab by Enlil-Bani, king of Isin. Old Babylonian period, 2003-1595 BCE. The Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq.
69. 2015-08-20 - Was the ark round? The new Babylonian text that reshaped Noah’s Ark. A Babylonian tablet describing a round ark, published by Irving Finkel. Flood narratives in Mesopotamian literature include Atrahasis and the eleventh tablet of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh; the relationship between these and the Genesis account is a matter of textual comparison, not of proving one from the other.
70. 2015-12-01 - Great Myths and Legends: Adapa the Sage: Flood, Myth and Magic in early Mesopotamia. A Penn Museum lecture on Adapa the sage, flood and magic in early Mesopotamia. Mesopotamian flood traditions include Atrahasis and the eleventh tablet of Gilgamesh, and they circulated in several versions rather than one.
71. 2016 - Epic of Gilgamesh, plaster cast of tablet XI, The Flood Tale, Neo-Assyrian period, c. 9th-7th century BC - Harvard Semitic Museum - Cambridg. 06162 (a cast or replica, not the original object). The Flood Tablet, Tablet XI of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh, from the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, British Museum K 3375. George Smith identified the flood narrative and announced it in December 1872. The often-repeated story that he tore off his clothes on reading it traces to a colleague's recollection and is very likely dramatised.
72. 2016 - Inscribed Bronze Axe from Northern Mesopotamia Middle-Assyrian Kingdom, 2nd Half of 2nd Mill. BCE. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
73. 2016 - God Nabu's attendant from Nimrud, Iraq. British Museum. Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, capital under Ashurnasirpal II and the site of the Northwest Palace, the Nimrud ivories and the queens' tombs found by the Iraqi archaeologist Muzahim Mahmud Hussein between 1988 and 1990, a discovery usually left out of Western tellings. It was bulldozed in 2015, and it was the real catastrophe of that year, more than the Mosul Museum video.
74. 2016 - Stamped brick with the name of Ishme-Dagan, king of Isin, Isin-Larsa Period, from Ur, currently housed in the British Museum. There are 11 lines of cuneiform inscriptions on this fired clay brick; stamped with the name of Ishme-Dagan, king of Isin. Isin-Larsa Period. From Ur, southern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. It is currently housed in the British Museum in London.
75. 2016-11-03 - Great Beasts of Legend: Anzu the Lion Headed Eagle. Penn Museum on Anzu, the lion-headed eagle of Mesopotamian myth who steals the tablet of destinies. Anzu appears constantly in seal imagery as well as in text.
76. 2016-11-11 - Random Walks 1 – The rights and wrongs of Babylonian tablets. An Oxford mathematics talk on the rights and wrongs of Babylonian tablets. Plimpton 322 is genuinely a mathematical table involving Pythagorean triples, but the claims made for it beyond that vary widely between scholars.
77. 2016-12-05 - Steven Garfinkle - Commerce, Communication, and State Formation: Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Steven Garfinkle on commerce, communication and state formation in daily Mesopotamian life. The Ur III bureaucracy generated tens of thousands of administrative tablets, one of the densest records of any ancient economy.
78. 2016-12-07 - Samuel Noah Kramer | The Sumerian Woman (Audio Only). Samuel Noah Kramer, the great populariser of Sumerian literature, lecturing on the Sumerian woman. Kramer worked largely from the Nippur tablets at Penn, which remain the main source for Sumerian literary texts.
79. 2017-01-30 - The Epic of Gilgamesh, Lecture by Andrew George. Andrew George, the standard translator of the epic, lectures on Gilgamesh. Behind the Standard Babylonian version sit Old Babylonian Akkadian versions from about 1800 BC and, behind those, separate Sumerian poems about Bilgames that a later editor welded into one arc.
80. 2017 - Administrative Tablet, Third Dynasty of Ur, 2026 BC. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
81. 2017 - Cuneiform Writing on Clay Tablet. As Babylon grew, the language spoken on its streets had to change. This remarkable tablet captures the interaction between the age-old cuneiform writing used for Babylonian-Akkadian and the alphabetic Aramaic that ultimately displaced it.
82. 2018-02-03 - Rise of the City: How the great god Marduk built the city of Babylon. A Penn Museum lecture on the Babylonian account of how Marduk built the city. Enuma Elish is a theological text that makes Marduk supreme and Babylon central; it is a claim about the present as much as a story about creation.
83. 2018-03-25 - A 4,000-year old tale of trade and contraband I Curator's Corner S3 Ep9 #CuratorsCorner. A British Museum curator on a 4,000-year-old record of trade and contraband. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative: receipts, loans, ration lists and the paperwork of institutions rather than literature.
84. 2018-05-06 - Assyrian envelopes I Curator's Corner + #CuratorsCorner. Assyrian clay envelopes in the British Museum. A tablet could be sealed inside a clay case bearing an impression, so an unopened envelope preserves a document exactly as it was sent.
85. 2018-11-23 - Great Books Webinar: Dr. Karen (Mari) Castle on Enheduana’s "The Exultation of Inanna," Part 1. A seminar on the Exaltation of Inanna, part one. The poem survives in dozens of Old Babylonian school copies, which is both why we have it and why the attribution is argued.
86. 2018-11-23 - Great Books Webinar: Dr. Karen (Mari) Castle on Enheduana’s "The Exultation of Inanna," Part 2. A seminar on the Exaltation of Inanna, part two. Reading a text through copies made five centuries later is the normal condition of Mesopotamian literature, not an exception.
87. 2018-11-26 - The Poor Man of Nippur - World's first film in Babylonian. The Poor Man of Nippur, filmed in Babylonian by Cambridge students, the first film made in the language. The text is an Akkadian comic tale of revenge from the Middle Babylonian period.
88. 2018-12-07 - How to write cuneiform with Irving Finkel and @preservethings I Curator's Corner S4 Ep9. Irving Finkel demonstrates writing cuneiform in wet clay with a reed stylus. Signs are wedge-shaped because a cut reed pressed into clay makes a wedge; the script's whole visual character follows from its materials.
89. 2019 - Nanni Moretti - primo piano, 2019. The tablet of Nanni to Ea-nasir, roughly 1750 BC from Ur, complaining about substandard copper. It is the oldest known customer complaint and a legitimate way into the enormous world of Mesopotamian commercial correspondence, which is most of what survives. British Museum.
90. 2019 - Detail, door-hinge, inscribed with the name of Entemena of Lagash, c. 2400 BCE, from Iraq. Pergamon Museum. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
91. 2019 - God Ea (Sumerian Enki) with fish-cloaked apkallus. Basalt water basin for religious purification from Assur, Iraq. Reign of Sennacherib, 7th
92. 2019 - Ishtar Temple foundation limestone slab of Tukulti-Ninurta I, 13th century BCE, from Assur, Iraq. Pergamon Museum, Berlin. Ishtar Temple's foundation limestone slab (about 4 tons) of Tukulti-Ninurta I, r. 1243-1207 BCE. The upper surface is incised with a cuneiform text. From Assur, Iraq. Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
93. 2019 - Assyrian archers attacking a city. From Khorsabad, Iraq. The Iraq Museum. The Iraq Museum in Baghdad. The widely reported figure of 170,000 items lost in 2003 is wrong: it came from a miscommunication by the first crews on the scene plus empty cases whose contents curators had removed before the First Gulf War. The accurate figure is around 15,000 items, of which roughly 6,000 had been recovered as of 2009.
94. 2019 - Gwynedd Museum and Art Gallery 2019 078. The Iraq Museum in Baghdad. The widely reported figure of 170,000 items lost in 2003 is wrong: it came from a miscommunication by the first crews on the scene plus empty cases whose contents curators had removed before the First Gulf War. The accurate figure is around 15,000 items, of which roughly 6,000 had been recovered as of 2009.
95. 2019 - Assyrian war chariot, from Khorsabad, Iraq. The Iraq Museum. The Iraq Museum in Baghdad. The widely reported figure of 170,000 items lost in 2003 is wrong: it came from a miscommunication by the first crews on the scene plus empty cases whose contents curators had removed before the First Gulf War. The accurate figure is around 15,000 items, of which roughly 6,000 had been recovered as of 2009.
96. 2019-07-24 - Cracking Ancient Codes: Cuneiform Writing - with Irving Finkel. Irving Finkel at the Royal Institution on how cuneiform was cracked. The decipherment ran through Grotefend's guesses at Old Persian and Rawlinson's copying of the trilingual Behistun inscription, and was tested in 1857 when four scholars independently translated the same unseen text.
97. 2019-09-16 - The Poor Man of Nippur and the Mayor’s House
98. 2019-10-08 - The Poor Man of Nippur as a work of literature. The Poor Man of Nippur considered as a work of literature. Mesopotamian narrative includes comic and satirical registers that rarely reach general audiences.
99. 2019-12-13 - Cuneiform Discoveries from Ancient Babylon. 's tablets include astronomical diaries recording observations across centuries, the longest continuous scientific record from the ancient world.
100. 2020-03-04 - Martha Roth | On Judicial Violence in Mesopotamia: The Problem of An Eye For An Eye. Martha Roth on judicial violence in Mesopotamia and the problem of an eye for an eye. Retaliation clauses are a minority of Hammurabi's roughly 282 provisions and are class-stratified: in kind between free men of standing, in silver for a commoner or a slave.
101. 2020-04-13 - The Descent of Ishtar and the Epic of Gilgamesh with Niek Veldhuis. Niek Veldhuis on the Descent of Ishtar and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Descent survives in both Sumerian and Akkadian versions that differ substantially, so translation choices carry real interpretive weight.
102. 2020-05-15 - Specimen Spotlight @ YPM: Cuneiform Tablet. A cuneiform tablet from the Yale Peabody Museum. The Yale Babylonian Collection holds around 45,000 items and shares its data with other digital cuneiform projects including CDLI.
103. 2020 - Clay tablet. The story of Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Old-Babylonian period, from southern Iraq. Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraqi Kurdistan. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
104. 2020 - Naram-Sin inscription AO6782 (further stitched). The Victory Stele of Naram-Sin, roughly 2250 BC, now in the Louvre. Naram-Sin took the divine determinative before his name and is shown wearing the horned crown of divinity, a specific and datable claim to godhood visible on the object itself. The stele was later carried off to Susa as loot by the Elamites, an ancient displacement long predating the modern ones.
105. 2020-08-07 - OI Explorers: Session 4, Scribe School. An ISAC session on the Mesopotamian scribe school. Lexical series such as Urra equals hubullu were copied endlessly by students, which is why they survive in so many exemplars.
106. 2021-01-22 - RTI Capture Session of a Large Cuneiform Tablet. A reflectance transformation imaging capture session on a large cuneiform tablet. RTI lights an object from many angles so that faint wedge impressions become readable without touching the surface.
107. 2021-04-12 - Middle East, Library of King Ashurbanipal, Part 2 (Stop 404, Room 55). The Library of Ashurbanipal, part two. The library was assembled deliberately, with scribes sent to copy texts from other cities, so it is a curated royal collection rather than an accumulation.
108. 2021-04-12 - Middle East, Library of King Ashurbanipal, Part 1 (Stop 404, Room 55). The Library of Ashurbanipal in Room 55, part one, described in British Sign Language. The Kuyunjik collection is the single richest source of Mesopotamian literary, scholarly and divinatory texts.
109. 2021-05-04 - Artifact Exploration: The Bisitun Monument. The Bisitun monument, also spelled Behistun or Bisotun, explored at the Kelsey Museum. Its trilingual inscription in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian was the key that Henry Rawlinson used to work towards reading cuneiform.
110. 2021-05-11 - Middle East, Gilgamesh flood tablet (Stop 403, Room 55). The Flood Tablet, K.3375, in Room 55, described in British Sign Language. George Smith identified its flood narrative in 1872 and announced it that December; the story that he tore off his clothes on reading it comes from a colleague's recollection and should be treated as legend.
111. 2021-06-02 - Clues in Cuneiform: Lives Revealed in Ancient Records of Mesopotamia. A Getty lecture reading lives out of cuneiform administrative records. The overwhelming bulk of the surviving corpus is bureaucratic, and it documents ordinary people far better than the literary texts do.
112. 2021 - Weld-Blundell Prism with transcription by Stephen Herbert Langdon (1876-1937). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
113. 2021 - Weld-Blundell Prism with transcription and translation by Stephen Herbert Langdon (1876-1937). The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
114. 2021 - Pergamon Museum Cone mosaics from temple district facade of Eanna in Uruk 8056. As explained in a notice in the museum, in a temple precinct in Uruk dedicated to a goddess Inanna a type of wall with clay cones was built. Such facades were built in other sites in Mesopotamia. Ur, Eridu and Habuba Kabira are mentioned.
115. 2021-11-15 - From Laundry Lists to Liturgies: The Origins of Writing in Ancient Mesopotamia. A Getty lecture on the origins of writing in Mesopotamia. The earliest Uruk IV tablets, roughly 3350 to 3200 BC, are accounting notations recording commodities and quantities; they do not encode grammar, so calling this the invention of writing overstates what the tablets do.
116. 2021-12-06 - Evidence ancient Babylonians were far more advanced than we thought - BBC REEL. Evidence that Babylonian astronomers were more advanced than long assumed. Babylonian astronomical texts include geometric methods for tracking Jupiter that anticipate techniques not seen again for over a thousand years.
117. 2021-12-06 - Mediterranean Marketplaces-Cuneiform Tablet. A cuneiform tablet from the Harvard collection presented as an object. Most tablets are palm-sized and were never meant to be read by anyone but a clerk.
118. 2022-01-06 - The ancient secrets revealed by deciphered tablets | BBC Ideas. What deciphered tablets reveal, from BBC Ideas. Cuneiform was used for more than a dozen languages across three thousand years, so a decipherment of the script was not a decipherment of any one tongue.
119. 2022-11-03 - Lecture: She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia ca. 3400-2000 BC. A Morgan Library lecture on Enheduanna and the women of Mesopotamia. Her status as the first named author is seriously contested: every manuscript of the poems is an Old Babylonian copy about 500 years after her life, and the contemporary anchor is the Penn disk B16665, not the poems.
120. 2023-02-02 - Felipe Rojas Silva | Cuneiform and Cross: Early Armenian Reuse of Urartian Inscriptions. Felipe Rojas Silva on early Armenian reuse of Urartian inscriptions. Cuneiform outlived Mesopotamian statehood and was reinterpreted by later peoples who could not read it.
121. 2023-03-05 - Unlocking the Secrets of Mesopotamian Magic with Dr. Irving Finkel. Irving Finkel on Mesopotamian magic. Incantations against ghosts, demons and illness make up a substantial share of the tablets recovered from Nineveh.
122. 2023-04-23 - Uncovering Secrets of Mesopotamian Medicine | Dr. Irving Finkel. Irving Finkel on Mesopotamian medicine. Medical texts prescribe plant and mineral remedies in detail, and the same practitioners handled ritual causes and physical treatment.
123. 2023-06-11 - Deciphering the Secrets of Mesopotamian Divination | Dr. Irving Finkel. Irving Finkel on Mesopotamian divination. Extispicy, reading the liver of a sacrificed sheep, was state practice, and clay liver models survive as teaching aids.
124. 2023 - Complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir three quater view. The tablet of Nanni to Ea-nasir, roughly 1750 BC from Ur, complaining about substandard copper. It is the oldest known customer complaint and a legitimate way into the enormous world of Mesopotamian commercial correspondence, which is most of what survives. British Museum.
125. 2023-10-06 - Back to School in Babylonia: The Aims of Babylonian Education | Susanne Paulus, ISAC. Susanne Paulus on the aims of Babylonian education. The edubba, the tablet house, taught scribes through copying exercises and lexical lists, and those school tablets are a large part of what survives.
126. 2023-10-18 - Ancient Inscribed Brick: King of the Universe?. An inscribed brick claiming the title king of the universe. Royal titles like king of the universe and king of the four quarters were formulaic claims rather than descriptions of actual reach.
127. 2023-10-27 - L'Assyrien par Ariane Thomas - A la découverte des écritures et langues anciennes. Louvre curator Ariane Thomas introduces Assyrian, that is Akkadian written in cuneiform. The script was used for Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Elamite and others, so cuneiform is a writing system rather than a language.
128. 2023-12-12 - Law and Morality in Sumerian Satirical Tales | Jana Matuszak, ISAC. Jana Matuszak on law and morality in Sumerian satirical tales. Sumerian literature includes disputation poems and satire alongside hymns, so the corpus is broader than the mythological texts that get anthologised.
129. 2024-01-26 - Enheduanna: Voicing the Feminine Divine Presentation and Musical Performance. Enheduanna's poetry presented with musical performance at Harvard Divinity School. The Exaltation of Inanna, Nin-me-shara, is the composition most associated with her name.
130. 2024-05-10 - Nele Ziegler | Music and Musicians in Mari – a Diachronic Overview. Nele Ziegler on music and musicians at Mari. The Mari letters name musicians and describe their training, which is rare documentary evidence for ancient performance.
131. 2024 - Cyrus Cylinder, Babylon, Iraq, mid 500s BC, cuneiform on clay - British Museum - DSC01316. The Cyrus Cylinder, a Babylonian foundation deposit recording Cyrus the Great's capture of Babylon in 539 BC, the event that ends this archive's ancient span. It is often described as the first charter of human rights, a modern reading that the text itself does not support: it is a conventional Mesopotamian royal building inscription in form.
132. 2024-07-10 - Daniel Schwemer | Living in a Precarious World: Magical Rituals from Ancient Mesopotamia. Daniel Schwemer on magical rituals from ancient Mesopotamia. Incantation and ritual texts are one of the largest surviving genres and were the working literature of professional exorcists.
133. 2024-11-04 - A Cursed Tablet
134. 2024-11-25 - Dr Jon Taylor on Reading the Library of Ashurbanipal. Jon Taylor on reading the Library of Ashurbanipal. The Kuyunjik collection came to London in the nineteenth century in tens of thousands of fragments, and joining them back into tablets is still unfinished work.
135. 2025-09-11 - Art and Writing in Early Mesopotamian Cities. A Getty discussion of art and writing in early Mesopotamian cities. Denise Schmandt-Besserat's token-to-cuneiform model appears on museum labels as settled fact, but critics including Robert Englund accept accounting as the driver while rejecting the specific descent outside numerals.
136. 2025-09-14 - Art and Writing in Early Mesopotamian Cities. Art and writing in the earliest Mesopotamian cities. Recent work argues that pre-literate cylinder seal motifs are a direct source for proto-cuneiform sign shapes, which cuts against the familiar claim that writing descended from clay tokens.
137. 2026-02-09 - The Epic of Atrahasis and the History of Cuneiform | Collection in Focus. The Morgan Library on the Epic of Atrahasis and the history of cuneiform. Atrahasis carries a flood narrative independent of the Gilgamesh version and is older as a composition.