Ancient Near East, Sumer, Third Dynasty of Ur, ca. 2080 to 2030 BCE. A sizable, hand-built terracotta administrative tablet with lightly-rounded peripheries, well-formed corners, and slight convex faces. The tablet contains twelve lines of impressed cuneiform text - made by impressing a sharpened reed or stick into the still wet clay before placing in the kiln - as well as a stamped seal rollout containing three additional lines of raised cuneiform characters. The translation denotes this tablet as an administrative record of employed workers from the city of Puzrish-Dagan, the modern site of Drehem. Cuneiform was generally a pictographic style of writing in its infancy, though it became a more abstract style of letter-based script around the 3rd millennium BCE. Size: 1.875" W x 2.1" H (4.8 cm x 5.3 cm).

Provenance: private New York, New York, USA collection; ex-private W. Steinberg collection, New York, New York, USA

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#139414

Surface wear and minor abrasions commensurate with age and use, minor nicks to some corners and peripheries, with light fading to cuneiform characters, otherwise intact and very good. Light earthen deposits and root marks throughout.