摘要：THE partial text of an ancient Sumerian clay tablet has recently been published by Professor Samuel Noah Kramer of the University of Pennsylvania, who found the tablet amongst a collection buried for almost fifty years in the University Museum following removal from debris of Nippur where it had been buried for over four thousand years. The importance of a medical document from this early period, several hundred years before its nearest competitor, was apparent and Dr. Kramer set out on a long task at decipherment. Although written in perfectly good Sumerian cuneiform, translation is difficult because of the technical nature of the subject and the occurrence of many botanical and chemical terms; furthermore one side of the tablet is almost illegible due to damage. The tablet itself is of red clay, dug probably from the silt of the Euphrates, baked hard, and roughly four by seven inches in size. In one corner one may see the winding passage left by an unusually considerate worm, since he did not burrow through that part of the tablet containing writing; such tablets buried for centuries in semi-damp soil become soft and are often ulnable to impede the progress of what Assyrilogists call the first bookworms.
