LOT 0222

Western Asiatic Jemdet Nasr Administrative Pictographic Tablet

URUK PERIOD, 31ST-29TH CENTURY BC

3" (67 grams, 74mm).

An exceptional administrative pictographic text tablet with complex series of numbers and symbols in six registers, pictorams above and to the reverse; supplied with a signed handwritten scholarly note by W.G. Lambert, late Professor of Assyriology, University of Birmingham, 1970-1993, stating '5 Sumerian clay tablet, Pictographic signs, Jemdet Nasr period, c. 3000 B.C. All of administrative content.'

Part of a specialised collection of cuneiform texts, the property of a London gentleman; examined by Professor Wilfrid George Lambert FBA (1926-2011), historian, archaeologist, and specialist in Assyriology and Near Eastern archaeology, in the late 1980s and early 1990s; this small collection is exceptional for the variety of types, including some very rare and well preserved examples; accompanied by a copy of Professor Lambert’s notes.