Receipt by a temple official of “one sheep and one lamb on the thirteenth day of the month” for rent.
When I introduce folks to our collections here at RBSC, I love to pull out some materials that might be considered more obscure or outside of our usual collecting area, just to hear people say, “I can’t believe we have that right here at UBC!” Possibly the objects that get the biggest reaction are our cuneiform tablets. That’s right, we have five cuneiform tablets, each one small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Recently, our good friends over at UBC Library’s Digitization Centre, in collaboration with the From Stone to Screen project, have digitized our tablets so that they can be studied from anywhere in the world. DI has also published a very interesting blog post about the history of the tablets and the complicated matter of determining their provenance. Enjoy, and the next time you stick a receipt in your wallet, think about what people 4,000 years in the future might make of it!