Visitors to the John Hay Library sometimes ask, "How old is your oldest book?"  Answer: 4,000+ years old.  The Library holds 27 cuneiform tablets and cones from ancient Mesopotamia, none of which had been translated until two seniors in Visiting Professor Alice Slotsky's class, Ancient Scientific Writings: Akkadian, undertook an elective project to decipher two of the tablets. Their transliterations and translations are published below

ABOUT CUNEIFORM WRITING.  Cuneiform writing was, for close to 3000 years, one of the principal media of literate civilization. This almost matches the length of time for which our own alphabet has been in common use. Brown's collection of ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets covers this long span of time and includes both Sumerian and Akkadian examples, both of which were written in cuneiform script. 

The Sumerians and Akkadians lived harmoniously in the same geographical area, the region between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, but they spoke two dramatically different and unrelated languages. Sumerian was the language of a people who migrated to southern Mesopotamia in the late 4th millennium BC. To this day, we do not know to which language family it belongs. Akkadian, on the other hand, is the earliest attested member of the Semitic family of languages. It was written and spoken by both the Assyrians and Babylonians. The writing was invented by the Sumerians and subsequently adapted for Akkadian and other languages, including Elamite in Iran and Hittite in Anatolia.

Both languages were written using a reed or wooden stylus that made impressions of simple shapes on soft clay. To read what was written on letters, legal documents, and literary and scientific texts, knowledge of some 200-300 cuneiform characters made up out of combinations of wedges and lines was adequate, but there is no way of knowing what percentage of the population possessed this basic literacy. Anything resembling formal education was primarily for the purpose of training scribes, not only to read and write but also to occupy administrative positions in palaces and temples. Most modern scholars believe that few people were literate in any given period of Mesopotamian history, and that, by and large, literacy was limited mostly to a small professional class of scribes. All had to undergo long training and much practice, like any other craftsmen, and having completed it, became members of a privileged class entitled to call themselves DUB.SAR "scribe." They were mostly male, although a few female scribes are known. Some became ordinary scribes earning their living in the streets, while others were employed by the palace or the temple. Some of these rose to be the literati of their day.

ABOUT THE PROJECT.  The project to translate cuneiform tablets in the Library's collection was a completely elective component of Professor Alice Slotsky's class, HM0232 (Ancient Scientific Writing: Akkadian). Two students enthusiastically rose to the challenge. Both are graduating seniors and advanced Akkadian students. Virginia Rimmer is an archeology major who is going on to an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Ancient Near East dept. Nicholas Kammer is an economics major and will be starting at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall.

Both tablets chosen for the project turned out to be economic texts written in Sumerian, not Akkadian.  Since the students are proficient in Akkadian but not Sumerian this is was a trial by error operation for both of them. They are poring over Sumerian cuneiform sign lists for the first time in their lives, and using books of parallel published tablets to try to crack the cuneiform and the translation. 

Commentary by: Alice Slotsky, Visiting Assistant Professor, History of Math, May 2002

OBVERSE line Transliteration Translation 1 9,180 9,180 2 [ ] s[a-g]i [ ] re[ed bund]les 3 gu-kilib-ba 14 sa-ta in each bale 14 bundles 4 30 gú sa-ta-zi 30 fresh reed bundles for taxes 5 ki Šeš-a-ni-ta from Šešani

REVERSE   line Transliteration Translation 6 kišib Inim- dSára sealed by Inim- dSára 7 gìr Kù-ga-ni under the responsibility of Kugani 8 iti dDumu-zi month of the god Dumuzi 9 mu dI-bí - the year when Ibbi- 10 dSuen lugal Sin became king   SEAL   1 Inim-dSára Inim- dSára 2 dub-sar scribe 3 dumu Lugal-iti-da son of Lugal-itida

OBVERSE   line Transliteration Translation 1 2 giš 1 bán 2 trees, 1 bán 2 11 giš 3 bán 11 trees, 3 bán 3 21 giš 3 bán 21 trees, 3 bán 4 20 giš 2 bán 5 sìla 20 trees, 2 bán 5 sìla 5 25 giš 2 bán 25 trees, 2 bán 6 22 giš 1 bán 5 sìla 22 trees, 1 bán 5 sìla 7 36 giš 1 bán 36 trees, 1 bán 8 36 giš 6 sìla 36 trees, 6 sìla 9 14 giš 2 sìla 14 trees, 2 sìla 10 135 giš šà sù 135 unproductive trees 11 šu-nígin 2 pi 2 bán 8 sìla zú-lum gur total amount of dates: 2 pi 2 bán 8 sìla 12 Ur-dIškur nu-giš kiri6 Ur-dIškur, gardener 13 1 giš 2 bán 1 tree, 2 bán 14 2 giš 2 bán 2 trees, 2 bán

REVERSE   line Transliteration Translation 15 7 giš 1 bán 5 sìla 7 trees, 1 bán 5 sìla 16 8 giš 1 bán 8 trees, 1 bán 17 19 giš 5 sìla 19 trees, 5 sìla 18 9 giš 2 sìla 9 trees, 2 sìla 19 166 giš  šà sù 166 unproductive trees 20 šu-nígin 1 pi 1 bán 2! (8) sìla zú-lum gur total amount of dates: 1 pi 1 bán 2! (8) sìla 21 Un-da-ga nu-giš kiri6 Undaga, gardener 22 iti šu-numun-ta u4-8-àm ba-ra-zal-ta month of the seed grain, 8 days having elapsed 23 mu-ús-sa má dEn-ki ba-ab-du8 the year after the ship of the god Enki was finished

Source: www.brown.edu