Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Buying a Sumerian Mystery

This Sumerian "administrative tablet", dating to 2200 to 2100 BCE, is up for online auction, opening bid $9500. The best part is it has never been translated. So, you know, it might say 500 bushels of barley from Field A, 400 from Field B, only 200 from Field C so give that overseer 10 lashes. But then again it might be a list of tribute from previously unknown cities, a list of payments made to the temples of mysterious gods, or even a list of ingredients provided to alchemists for their work on the transmutation of lead to gold. You never know.
Posted by at
Labels: ,

2 comments:

G. Verloren said...

Never been translated, eh? How would anyone know if it actually had been and they just wanted to give it false allure?

Heck, all you'd really need to do is translate the first line or so to have a sense of the kind of content. "Oh, ho hum, another boring grain report. I'll just not bother translating the rest and add it to the pile for auction."

January 27, 2015 at 8:59 PM
John said...

Maybe it gets interesting toward the end.

January 27, 2015 at 9:09 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)