Position in chronology
TMH 05, 163
About this tablet
A small clay tablet from Nippur, written in the Early Dynastic period, recording animals brought as mašdarea — a voluntary gift or offering presented to a temple or to a god. Three donors are named with their titles: Ili-beli, who is the city overseer; a woman (or man) called Dam-egal attached to a household called 'the house of ŠE+KU'; and Aba-Enlil, a fuller (a launderer of cloth). The tablet is dated only by month — Gangan-e, the ninth month of the Nippur calendar. It is a snapshot of religious giving in a Sumerian city, showing a high official and a working craftsman making offerings side by side.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Offerings received: a number of rams from Ili-beli, the city overseer; one female kid from Dam-egal of the ŠE+KU household; and one male lamb from Aba-Enlil the fuller. All of these were presented as mašdarea gifts. Recorded in the ninth month, Gangan-e — where the scribe slipped and added an extra sign in the month name. The first entry's quantity is lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] male sheep — Ili-beli (Ilī-bēlī), overseer of the city. 1 female kid — Dam-egal, of the house of ŠE+KU. 1 male lamb — Aba-Enlil, the fuller. (These are) mašdarea-offerings. Month: Gangan-e (ninth month). (the scribe wrote a superfluous MU sign in the month name)
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
[x] udu-nita i3-li2-be6-li2 ugula-iri 1(asz@c) asz2-gar3 dam-e2-gal2 e2-|SZE+KU| 1(asz@c) sila4-nita a-ba-en-lil2 azlag4 masz2-da-re-a iti gan-gan-<<MU>>-e3-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 163. 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 (P020577) — 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.