The receipt says: “29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim”. The most probable reading of this sentence is: “A total of 29,086 measures of barley were received over the course of 37 months. Signed, Kushim.”
The tablet is written in proto cuneiform, the earliest format of real writing – its basically got numbers, nouns and a limited list of verbs, but no grammatical elements… so we don’t know that it was past tense, it’s just a guess – but a reasonable one:
We know Kushim signed about a dozen other tablets listing various transactions, which were always either receiving, or disbursing grain. Proto debits and credits, if you will.
The distribution of grain has a recipient and a purpose (e.g., to four different people to make beer), and usually does not have a time frame.
The receipts have a time frame, and sometimes a source (sort of a “tax receipt”).
The thought is that basically, when the grain came in it’d be tallied, then tablets would be added noting recipients and purpose until it had been disbursed.
It’s also worth noting that clay tablets are challenging to date, and there’s an (as far as I know, ongoing) debate about whether “kushim” was an individual, or an office (e.g., “grain wrangler”).
Besides the name it’s the first evidence of bureaucracy.
In Germany we can be happy that we took the move to paper last century. Imagine “might you please fill out the clay form 101A and sign it. And don’t forget your clay passport.” Hopefully next century we conquer the transition to digital in German public offices.
US agencies are just as bad FYI. I know some agencies that have forms that go up to almost 9,000… (They used a numerical naming system for each form, starting with “1”). It doesn’t mean that there are 8,000 active forms, just that since the agencies inception they have had to create that many different form templates. But there probably is ~500 forms being used at any given time if I took a shot in the dark.
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