Position in chronology
TMH 05, 157
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from Nippur, written around 2400 BCE, listing goods issued or received for a single occasion — probably a feast, a festival offering, or the provisioning of an institutional household. The scribe counted out sheep, basket after basket of dates and apples, thousands of bread loaves, the special coarse bread used for brewing beer, flour set aside as a 'regular delivery,' and a jar of good oil. The scale is striking: 3,600 loaves of fine bread is not a family meal but the catering budget of a temple or palace. Tablets like this are the backbone of what we know about early Sumerian economies — nobody wrote about dinner, but they carefully wrote down its ingredients.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Supplies received: 2 sheep; 6 baskets of premium dates at one barig each; 4 baskets of dates at two ban each; 2 baskets of a second date variety; 2 baskets of apples; 3,600 loaves of fine bread; 180 loaves of brewer's bread; 120 units issued for consumption; 4 measures of za-tum flour as the standing allocation, plus one top-grade measure of the same; and one jar of good oil. The back of the tablet was left blank, and the writing that ran over the edges is now mostly rubbed away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 sheep; 6 baskets of dates, 1 barig (each), select quality; 4 baskets of dates, 2 ban2 (each); 2 baskets of dates, SUG5-type; 2 baskets of apples; 3,600 loaves of fine bread; 180 loaves of beer-bread (bappir); 120 KA — consumed; 4 (measures of) za-tum flour, regular delivery; 1 prime (measure of) za-tum flour, regular delivery; 1 (jar of) fine oil, a šagan-DI vessel. (Reverse: uninscribed. Top and bottom edges carry the continuation of the ruled cases; the traces there are largely worn.)
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
2(asz@c) udu 6(asz@c) zu2-lum gurdub 1(barig@c) sig15 4(asz@c) zu2-lum gurdub 2(ban2@c) 2(asz@c) zu2-lum gurdub SUG5 2(asz@c) haszhur gurdub 1(szar2@c) ninda sig15 3(gesz2@c) ninda bappir 2(gesz2@c) KA gu7 4(asz@c) zi3 za-tum sa2-du11 1(asz@c) sag zi3 za-tum sa2-du11 1(asz@c) i3-du10 szagan-DI
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 157. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany (P020571) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.