Tablet with Cattle Transaction

2350 BC - 2100 BC
Clay
Bismaya (Adab)
9.9 cm x 5.0 cm x 2.0 cm
A651

Oriental Institute Museum

Tablet with Cattle Transaction

The cuneiform script, like our own alphabet, was used to write many different languages. This cuneiform tablet, written in Akkadian, concerns a transaction involving cattle. Archaeologists have found many such tablets recording the sale or purchase of animals.

Collected by

Oriental Exploration Fund, University of Chicago
Excavated by The Oriental Institute 1903-1904



Multimedia

An Early Clay Tablet
See how this early clay tablet used pictures to communicate.

Suggested Readings

Claiborne, Robert. The Birth of Writing. The Emergence of Man series. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1974.

Roaf, Michael. Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. New York: Facts on File, 1990.

Walker, C.B.F. Cuneiform: Reading the Past. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.