Position in chronology
BIN 08, 087
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic accounting tablet, roughly mid-third millennium BCE, tracking substantial quantities of copper — hundreds of minas, well over a hundred kilograms — as it moves through an institutional workshop. The entries distinguish copper 'brought out from the ore' (i.e. smelted) from copper issued out of the palace stores, and the whole reckoning is closed by a named functionary connected with the smiths. Documents like this are our earliest paperwork for organized metallurgy: a scribe checking that the metal handed to the foundry matched the metal handed back.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The account opens with 286 units of copper in the form of ḫabuda-implements, then 110 minas of copper by weight, followed by a further entry in minas whose details are broken away. One line is lost entirely. What survives notes copper 'brought out of the ore' — that is, smelted rather than drawn from stock. A separate lot of 251 minas of copper was issued from the palace. The account closes by naming the weaver and the overseer of the smiths, and marks the metal as handed over.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine286 (units of) copper — ḫabuda(-implements); 110 (2 gešʾu minus 10) minas of copper; [x] minas, [x] ... from [x] ... […] (line lost) brought out from the ore(-earth); 251 minas of copper — the weaver('s share?), brought out from the palace; the weaver, the overseer of the smiths — given.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
4(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 6(asz@c) uruda ha-bu11-da 2(gesz2@c) la2 1(u@c) uruda ma-na [x] ma-na [x] x-a-ta [x] x [...] sahar-ta e3-a 4(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 1(asz@c) uruda ma-[na] usz-bar e2-gal-ta e3-a usz-bar ugula simug-ne szum2-ma
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — BIN 08, 087. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (P221569) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.