Ancient Near East, Southern Mesopotamia, Old Babylonian Period, ca. 1900 to 1600 BCE. A gathering of two large rectangular clay tablets with lightly rounded peripheries and slightly convex faces. Each tablet contains twenty-eight full with three partial as well as forty lines of inscribed cuneiform characters, respectively, made by impressing a sharpened reed or stick into the still-wet clay just before being placed inside a kiln. Though the smaller tablet is untranslated, a rough translation of the larger tablets denotes it as an administrative record listing the names of men as, "people (troops? workers?) of tu-ri-ik," an unknown expression. 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. Lucite display stands for photography purposes only. Size of largest: 2.5" W x 3.875" H (6.4 cm x 9.8 cm).

Provenance: private East Coast, USA collection

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#137743

Smaller tablet has a few areas of repair with substantial losses and adhesive residue along break lines. Larger tablet has loss to lower section. Both tablets have chips and nicks around faces and peripheries, fading to most inscribed cuneiform characters, and some rough edges. Nice earthen deposits throughout.