Position in chronology
TMH 05, 179
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic account tablet from Nippur, roughly the mid-third millennium BCE, now in the Hilprecht Collection at Jena. A scribe opens with a total of 96 units of a commodity written e-gu₄ — a term tied to oxen (fodder, or the ox-team allotment) — notes that two of them are 'prime', and then breaks the total down: fifteen units consumed, fifty set aside for a second round. It is a working ledger of the sort that kept a temple or large household solvent, and it shows how early Sumerian scribes already used a header total followed by itemized withdrawals.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The account opens with a total of 96 units of e-gu₄, two of which are marked as top-grade. Out of that stock, 15 units were used up by the ŠE-GIN₂ (either a product or the party charged with it), and 50 units are booked for the second instalment. The reverse of the tablet was left blank, so no summary or date follows.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine96 (units of) e-gu₄, 2 (of them) prime/head, from among it: 15 (units of) e-gu₄ — the ŠE-GIN₂ consumed; 50 (units of) e-gu₄ — for the 2nd (occasion/instalment). (The reverse appears to be uninscribed.)
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
1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) 6(asz@c) e-gu4 2(asz@c) sag sza3-be6-ta 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) e-gu4 SZE-GIN2 ab-gu7 5(u@c) e-gu4 2(disz@t)-kam-sze3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 179. 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 (P020593) — 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.