This small clay tablet, acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1886 and dated on paleographic and contextual grounds to approximately 2350–2150 BC, belongs to the Akkadian period of Mesopotamia. It is an administrative account text drawn from the Quradum archive, recording transactions involving bitumen (natural asphalt), a commodity of considerable economic and practical importance in ancient Mesopotamia. Cuneiform signs were impressed into the wet clay surface before firing, preserving a ledger-style entry typical of the highly organized bureaucratic systems that characterized Akkadian-era temple and palace economies. The precise findspot within Mesopotamia is unrecorded in the acquisition documentation, a common limitation for nineteenth-century purchases. Bitumen was harvested from natural seeps along the Euphrates and its tributaries and was used widely in construction, waterproofing, boat caulking, and as an adhesive. Its appearance in administrative texts of this period underscores the degree to which raw material distribution was centrally managed. Biblically, bitumen (Hebrew ḥēmār) appears in Genesis 11:3 as a mortar employed in the construction of the Tower of Babel, and in Exodus 2:3 as the waterproofing agent applied to the basket carrying the infant Moses. The Genesis reference situates the material firmly in Mesopotamia, consistent with the known geography of natural bitumen deposits. The tablet does not corroborate any specific biblical narrative, but it does confirm the commodity's documentary presence in Akkadian Mesopotamia at a period broadly contemporaneous with or prior to the Genesis traditions' compositional backdrop. Sources: Metropolitan Museum of Art collection records (accession via purchase 1886); I. J. Gelb et al., The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD); M. Civil, JAOS studies on Akkadian administrative texts.
This tablet provides direct documentary evidence of organized bitumen commerce in Akkadian Mesopotamia, situating a materially attested commodity within the same geographic milieu referenced in Genesis and Exodus, and illustrating the sophisticated administrative infrastructure of the period.