Cuneiform Tablet, List of work days required by low status male workers for a variety of heavy agricultural tasks.

Inscriptions

Incised, obverse, in cuneiform [translation]: "x workgang days. / x of land harrowed x times: / 54 workgang days. / 15 iku of land harrowed two times (= 5.4 hectares): / 20 workgang days. / 1,575 sar of reed (= 5.67 hectares), each (erin2 worker) plucked 15 sar (per day) (= 540 m2), / their labor is 105 days. / 690 sar of reed (= 2.48 hectares), each (erin2 worker) plucked 20 sar (per day) (= 720 m2), / their labor is 34 1/2 days. / 810 sar of apple trees (= 2.92 hectares), each (erin2 worker): 10 sar (per day) (=360 m2), / their labor is 81 days. / 1008 sar of apple trees (= 3.63 hectares), each (erin2 worker): 12 sar (per day) (= 432 m2), / their labor is 84 days. / 480 sar of apple trees (= 1.73 hectares), each (erin2 worker): 15 sar (per day) (= 540 m2), / their labor is 32 days." Incised, reverse, in cuneiform [translation]: "182 sar (earth) dug (= 6,552 m2), each (erin2 worker): 7 sar (per day) (= 2 m2), / their labor is 26 days. / 1,040 sar of reed (= 3.74 hectares), each (erin2 worker) plucked 12 sar (per day) (= 432 m2), / their labor is 86 days. / 1,344 sar of thorny weed (= 4.84 hectares), each (erin2 worker) cut 12 sar (per day) (= 432 m2), / their labor is 112 days. / 630 sar thorny weed (= 2.27 hectares) each (erin2 worker) cut 15 sar (per day) (= 540 m2), / their labor is 42 days. / ... guruš workers bound reed / ... hired workers: 6 sila3 each / ... 5 guruš workers, ox drivers, and ??? / ... ... / ... ... / ... ... " Stamped seal, in cuneiform [translation]: "Ur-Am3-ma, / the scribe, / the son (of) Na-DI"

Label

Cuneiform is not a language but rather a style of script that can be used to write several different languages. Cuneiform literally means “wedge-shaped,” from the way the stylus made marks on clay. Cuneiform tablets developed out of a need to keep records of the storage, movement, and distribution of material goods. Once fired in a kiln or baked in the sun, the clay tablets could be held in storehouses indefinitely. The small cuneiform tag, which would have been attached to a larger container much like we might write on the exterior of a cardboard box, still holds impressions of a cord across its surface. The largest tablet has the seal of a scribe repeatedly pressed into the clay beneath the cuneiform inscriptions. Furthermore, the individuals mentioned in the tablets—from named administrators to women working in a brewery to a “yarn man”—provide valuable insight into the people of ancient Mesopotamia who are otherwise invisible to history.

From the exhibition, Stone, Sand, and Clay: Connecting Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean, curated by Ashley B. Offill, Curator of Collections

Course History

REL 81, Dickinson Distinguished Scholar Seminar: Orientalism and the Origins of Religion, Susannah Heschel, Fall 2012

ANTH 12.2, The Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Jason Herrmann, Spring 2013

ANTH 39, Archaeology of the Middle East, Jesse Casana, Fall 2019

ANTH 39.01/MES 3.02, Archaeology of the Middle East, Jesse Casana, Spring 2021

Anthropology 39.01, Middle Eastern Studies 3.02, Archaeology of the Middle East, Jesse Casana, Fall 2023

Anthropology 39.01, Middle Eastern Studies 3.02, Archaeology of the Middle East, Jesse Casana, Fall 2024

Anthropology 39.01, Middle Eastern Studies 3.02, Archaeology of the Middle East, Jesse Casana, Fall 2024

History 10.02, Archival Research, Julia Rabig, Summer 2025

Anthropology 31.01, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 36.01, Gender in Cross Cultural Perspectives, Sabrina Billings, Fall 2025

Theater 15.01, Theatre & Society I, Samantha Lazar, Fall 2025

Exhibition History

From Discovery to Dartmouth: The Assyrian Reliefs at the Hood Museum of Art, 1856-2006, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 19, 2006-June 17, 2007.

Stone, Sand, and Clay: Connecting Cultures in the Ancient Mediterranean, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 7, 2025 - Ongoing

Publication History

Benjamin R. Foster, Yale University, "Texts and Fragments," Journal of Cuneiform Studies, April 31, 1979, p. 236.

Magnus Widell, From Discovery to Dartmouth: The Assyrian Reliefs at the Hood Museum of Art, 1856-2006, A Selection of Cuneiform Tablets from the Hood Museum of Art's Collection, Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College, 2006, no. 10.

Widell, Magnus, Ur III Economy and Bureaucracy: The Neo-Sumerian Cuneiform Tablets in the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College (I). Orient: Reports of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan, 55 (1), 2019.

Object has been 3-D scanned by Jason Herrmann in 2016 for a publicly accessible 3-D model. Link is below: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/cuneiform-tablet-23-1-7186-0485bcc1c5ac4599b8f7918e1dd10399

Provenance

Dartmouth Scientific Association; given to present collection, 1923.

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Subjects