**First Time At Auction**

Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, Old Babylonian Period, ca. 2000 to 1600 BCE. A very old administrative document listing fields, in the form of a ceramic "biscuit," a tablet covered in dense written information. Size: 2.85" W x 5.6" H (7.2 cm x 14.2 cm)

This cuneiform tablet is one of the roughly 2 million known; of these, between 30,000 and 100,000 have been translated. The earliest translations came in 1836 from the work of French scholar Eugene Burnouf and by the 1850s multiple scholars were able to produce similar translations, meaning the language had been deciphered. Similar to many other known cuneiform tablets, this one is concerned with property. Cuneiform tablets seem to have been used mainly as a way of tabulating economic concerns. Although it might be more romantic to imagine that these tablets discussed the doings of kings and gods, from a historical standpoint, it is much more interesting to learn about the daily transactions of humanity's first great urban center.

Provenance: private East Coast, USA collection

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#132504

Loss to one side as shown. Area around loss is fragile, with some crumbling. Repaired from multiple pieces.