Talk:Kushim (Uruk period)

Requested move 23 September 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Non-contested move (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 04:17, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

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Kushim (individual) → Kushim (Uruk Period) – page title says this is an individual, but the opening paragraph points to this being an unknown type of entity. 209.6.46.124 (talk) 19:37, 23 September 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. SITH (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 10 December 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Kushim (Uruk Period) → Kushim – That disambig currently has only two topics, the other of which has a different spelling from this, so this is the primary topic.  Nixinova   T   C   02:26, 10 December 2020 (UTC) —Relisted. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 18:40, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

• Strong oppose clearly WP:NOPRIMARY see: "Kushim was" and "kushim were". How we spell article titles is irrelevant, see WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:52, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support. Looking at In ictu oculi's Google Books links, one will see that, of the five results for "Kushim were", three are verbatim copies of the same quotation, and one refers to Kushim (Uruk Period), leaving only two unique references to the less common usage (the plural form of Cushi). Furthermore, the latter article has been tagged for migration to Wiktionary (per WP:WINAD). 2406:3400:610:4FF0:541F:A785:42AE:AF94 (talk) 02:05, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
• Move to Kushim Tablet (tablet?). As this article itself admits, It is uncertain if the name refers to an individual, a generic title of an officeholder, or an institution. As the article suggests, there is plenty of unknowns, so the current statement the earliest known example of a named person in writing sounds more like a DYK-style tabloid-ey hook than a cold statement of fact. This article is about the ancient tablet and the information on it, not about Kushim the person. Plain searches reveal many things named Kushim (several company names) so I hesitate to call this PTOPIC in the grand sheme of things, although Cushi is not much of a contender either. Pageviews are inconclusive too. I wouldn't mind redirecting Kushim here and adding a hatnote. No such user (talk) 14:46, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Alternate meaning

A paper mentions that KU_b2 ŠIM_a may mean "beer bread", though it doesn't elaborate as to why (even in footnote 9). Perhaps this should be in the article, but I don't know much about the subject. --Pokechu22 (talk) 00:18, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

References

Multiple tablets

This article refers to "the Kushim Tablet", but I'm not entirely sure that's accurate. The only source that directly uses that name is this video, and somewhat weakly the National Geographic article (which says "The Kushim tablet"). Sapiens shows that same tablet and cites it as (MS 1717), but The Beginnings of Accounting shows two other ones, both of which come from Archaic Bookkeeping, which labels them as MSVO 3, 64 and MSVO 3, 55 respectively (CLDI cites back to the original German version of Archaic Bookkeeping as far as I can tell; however, MSVO 3, 55 doesn't seem to match while MSVO 3, 64 does). Archaic Bookkeeping also has the "29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim" tablet, which it labels as MSVO 3, 29. (MSVO apparently stands for Materialien zu den frühen Schriftzeugnissen des Vorderen Orients (Berlin 1991 ff.), but I don't really know what that means). The National Geographic article also shows a second tablet, this one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That one is actually also MSVO 3, 82 (note the "Museum No.") but more importantly also mentions Kushim in it (which the National Geographic article seems to have missed); the Met dates it to 3100–2900 B.C. but CDLI gives Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC), same as the other ones (so the claim about it being produced one or two generations after seems like it might be wrong to me). (The Met also has a second tablet, which is MSVO 3, 55 again, though it still doesn't match the image given in Archaic Bookkeeping). One other oddity is that CDLI has 21 tablets containing Kushim (based on my attempt at querying it at least; there actually are 2 more if not restricted to MSVO (CUSAS 01, 114 and CUSAS 31, 084) but I can't actually see Kushim directly in it, only in the transliteration); this contradicts The Beginnings of Accounting which says there are 18; I'm guessing this is just a case of more tablets being discovered.

What I just wrote is a bit of a dense mess, so to summarize: it's not clear to me that there's just one tablet that is called "the Kushim Tablet"; there definitely are several tablets mentioning Kushim. I'm no expert on the subject (I hadn't even heard about it until a day ago), so perhaps someone with more experience can clear it up. --Pokechu22 (talk) 00:18, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Images from Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has public-domain photos of some of the tablets: 1988.433.1 (MSVO 3, 82), 1988.433.3 (MSVO 3, 55), 1988.433.2 (MSVO 3, 79); 1 and 3 mention Kushim. These images are mostly on commons (though not entirely; the sketches of them are not present). Although the "29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim" tablet is not one of the oens included (and there are no free photos or sketches of it, though someone could do their own sketch of it to my understanding), they do depict the name Kushim and probably would be of use in the article. (They may also need rotation, though I don't know if there is a standard rotation for clay tablets; the Met images just differ from CDLI.) --Pokechu22 (talk) 00:18, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Image of the tablet.

There should be an image of the tablet that mentions Kushim. Jdietr601 (talk) 19:06, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree Omnism (talk) 16:13, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Orientation

Is the digital illustration on the page in the correct orientation? Born25121642 (talk) 23:28, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure. From what I have in § Images from Met, it matches the photographs of two tablets, but not the corresponding drawings (which are rotated horizontally), and the CDLI photos of those same two tablets are oriented the same way as the drawings. I would assume the CDLI orientation is more likely to be correct, but I don't know what rules if any determine it (or if there even is a standard orientation). Note that I have no formal training in this area. --Pokechu22 (talk) 23:42, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

29,086 or 28,086 measures?

An anonymous user replaced "29,086 measures" with "28,086 measures". The sources in the article (Sapiens (and accountingweb and national geographic, which both quote Sapiens as a source)) all seem to say "29,086". Archaic Bookkeeping and The Birth of Writing both give "135,000 liters". The Beginnings of Accounting and Accounting Thought and The Accounting Historians Journal don't mention that specific tablet in the part I have access to.

However, Archaic Bookkeeping gives unit conversions on page 36 and page 37, and the math works out to 3*(10*3*10*6*5)+1*(3*10*6*5)+0*(10*6*5)+6*(6*5)+1*5+1 = 28086 (and it approximates the unit at 4.8 liters, with 28086*4.8 = 134812.8 ≈ 135000). Additionally, CDLI translates the text as "5617 1/5 N1’s, exchange barley, 37 months, Kushim’s final account.", where (5617*5)+1 is 28086 (CDLI also mentions 135,000 liters). Both of these make me think that 29086 is a typo, but it's annoying that neither of these sources directly say 28,086. --Pokechu22 (talk) 19:18, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like just doing a calculation is WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. Could just put it as 28086 and add a note describing the conflicting sources. MarkiPoli (talk) 18:40, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

This could arguably fall under WP:CALC, but yeah, a note is probably optimal either way. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:00, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I went ahead and changed it and added the note MarkiPoli (talk) 08:17, 23 June 2024 (UTC)