Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 105
About this tablet
A palm-sized clay account from Adab in southern Iraq, written roughly 2400 BCE. A scribe tallied deliveries or allotments of clay jars to a handful of named craftsmen and dependents of the household — Ur-Nanše, Ur-Erra the mat-weaver, a stone-cutter named Giri-ni, an entertainer, and Lugal-alsa. It is the humblest kind of record, but it puts real names to the workshop staff of an Early Dynastic institution and shows that even a few pots were worth writing down.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Pottery issued: three jars to Ur-Nanše; six jars to Ur-Erra the mat-maker; then Šeš-tur, and Giri-ni the stone-cutter; one jar to the acrobat's man. The next part of the tablet is broken away. Where the text resumes, a further quantity of jars is entered for Lugal-alsa.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 jars (of pottery) — Ur-Nanše. 6 jars — Ur-Erra, the reed-worker (mat-maker). Šeš-tur. Giri-ni, the stone-cutter. 1 jar — the man of the ḫub-bu (acrobat/dancer). (Break) [n] jars — Lugal-alsa.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(asz@c) dug ur-nansze 6(asz@c)# dug ur-erx(KISZ)-ra ad-kup4# szesz-tur giri3-ni zadim 1(asz@c) dug lu2 HUB2-BU-kam [...] [n] dug# lugal-al-sa6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 105. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252779) — 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.