Position in chronology
CST 022
About this tablet
A small, pillow-shaped Early Dynastic account tablet, now in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. A scribe has ruled it into boxes and listed what two named people — Ama-tuku-gal-zu and Nin-urni — owe or have received: barley by the gur, jars of pig fat, garments, a sheep, two pigs raised for the table, and silver reckoned in shekels and finally in a full mina. The closing lines are what make it interesting: they state that 'a claim exists' and that 'its tablet has been handed over,' the language of an obligation formally settled or transferred. It is one of the earliest surviving glimpses of written debt-keeping, from around the middle of the third millennium BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The account runs: 15 gur of barley charged to Ama-tuku-gal-zu; 1 gur 2 barig to Nin-urni; 15 measures of pig fat (UMBIN); one and a half shekels of silver; two nig-lam garments; one sheep, its silver value now broken away; two pigs kept for eating; two bar-dul garments; one dul cloth; 43 shekels of silver; goods belonging to someone whose name is lost; then a name, Mu-bi-ki-gal-la, partly damaged. The last lines record that a claim stands against the account, that the total involved is one mina of silver, and that the tablet documenting it has been handed over.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine15 gur of barley — Ama-tuku-gal-zu; 1 (gur) 2 barig — Nin-urni; 15 (measures of) lard, UMBIN; 1½ shekels of silver; 2 nig-lam garments; 1 sheep, its silver [...]; 2 pigs for eating; 2 bar-dul garments; 1 dul(?) cloth; 43(?) shekels of silver; goods of [...]; Mu-bi-ki-gal-la[...]; a claim exists against it; 1 mina of silver; its tablet has been handed over.
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
1(u@c) 5(asz@c) sze gur ama-tuku-gal-zu 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) nin-ur2!-ni 1(u@c) 5(as@c) i3-szah2 UMBIN 1(disz) 1/2(disz) ku3 gin2-kam 2(asz@c) nig2-lam2 1(asz@c) udu ku3-bi# [...] 2(asz@c) szah2 nig2-gu7 2(asz@c) bar-dul5 1(asz@c) tug2 dul? 4(u)? 3(disz) ku3 gin2# nig2 x-[(...)] mu-bi#?-ki-gal#-la#?-[(x)] inim-ma an-gal2 1(asz@c) ku3 ma-na-kam#? im-bi al-szum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CST 022. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK (P212946) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.