An Ur III Table of Reciprocals without Place Value Numbers

Book chapter, 2016

In Fig. 13.1.1 below is shown a hand copy and conform transliteration of SM 2685, a clay tablet from the Suleimaniyah Museum in the Kurdistan region in northeastern Iraq. The clay tablets in the Suleimaniyah Museum are acquired in the antiquities market and are therefore unprovenanced, but in most cases probably from Old Babylonian Larsa. However, the writing on SM 2685 is such that the text can be either from the Neo-Sumerian Ur III period or Early Old Babylonian, and, as will be shown below, the atypical table of reciprocals inscribed on the tablet is clearly older than all earlier known Ur III tables of reciprocals.