Position in chronology
TMH 05, 169
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic account from Nippur, roughly 2500 BCE, now in the Hilprecht Collection at Jena. A scribe has ruled the clay into boxes and entered large round numbers — 3,600, 150, 120, 240, 300 — of a commodity written e-me-sig, together with bundles of numun2-rushes, each batch set against a person or an office: the city-ruler himself, a man named Al-darra, I-ursag the boatman, U-munizal. The exact commodity is not certain (the term may denote bricks or a similar mass-produced item), but the shape of the document is plain: it is a delivery or work quota list, the kind of ledger that kept a Sumerian temple estate running.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A tally sheet: 3,600 units of e-me-sig charged to the governor's account, under Al-darra; 150 to I-ursag, the boatman; 120 to U-munizal, the u5-man; a further 240 units unassigned. Then 300 bundles of marsh rushes — the next word is damaged — and 300 of an item written za-la-il. The whole account closes with a single name, Lugal-šud, presumably the official who drew it up or took delivery. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3,600 (units of) e-me-sig: the ruler (ensi); Al-darra. 150 (units of) e-me-sig: I-ursag, the boatman(?). 120 (units of) e-me-sig: U-munizal, the u5-man. 240 (units of) e-me-sig. 300 numun2-rushes, [...]. 300 za-la-il. Lugal-šud. (Reverse uninscribed; a few traces on the lower edge, illegible.)
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(szar2@c) e2-me-sig ensi2 al-dar-ra 2(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) e2-me-sig i7-ur-sag ma2?-lah4 2(gesz2@c) e2-me-sig u3-mu-ni-zal lu2 u5 4(gesz2@c) e2-me-sig 5(gesz2@c) numun2 x 5(gesz2@c) za3-la2-il2 lugal-szu12
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 169. 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 (P020583) — 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.