**First Time At Auction**

Ancient Near East, Sumer, Third Dynasty or Ur, ca. 2080 to 2030 BCE. A petite clay tablet with rounded lateral, upper, and lower sides, and slightly convex faces. The tablet bears nine lines of inscribed cuneiform text which is formed by impressing a sharpened reed or stick into the still-wet clay just before firing. The translation of this piece records a receipt for dead animals. 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: 1.125" W x 1.25" H (2.9 cm x 3.2 cm).

Provenance: private Houston, Texas, USA collection; ex-Bonhams, London, Knightsbridge Antiquities Auction (May 8, 2013, part of lot 147); ex-Joseph Klein collection, New York, New York, USA, formed between 1941 and 1980, thence by descent

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#132907

Surface wear and minor abrasions commensurate with age, minor nicks to faces and peripheries, with fading to most cuneiform characters, otherwise intact and very good. Light earthen deposits throughout.