What’s in the box?: 2 (2023-08-24)

Created by: Heinle, Michael

An administrative tag from the Uruk IV period (ca. 3350-3200 BC). This tag was excavated at Uruk (modern Warka) in southern Mesopotamia, and is now in the collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.

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. 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. 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 tag—but also so that, hanging, the inscription was read in lines from top to bottom. The interpretation and order of reading of the three signs present on the tag are as yet unclear. 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. Let us then attempt a translation of this text dating to ca. 3300 BC: “Basket of accountant Bull.” CDLI entry: P002207

credit: Heinle, Michael

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