Position in chronology
TMH 05, 203 + frags.
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic account from Nippur, written on a small clay tablet now split between collections in Jena and Philadelphia. It lists measured amounts of emmer wheat — a coarse grain — issued to or on behalf of a handful of named men, several of them bearing the common Sumerian names Lugal-saga, Lugal-ezem and Enlil-alsa. At the end a man named Kur-mu-GAM-ra signs off as the one who took receipt, and the whole transaction is dated to the harvest month. It is a routine piece of temple or estate bookkeeping from roughly the twenty-fifth century BCE, the kind of document that made a redistributive economy work.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Emmer wheat, measured in lidga and barig units: one lidga and three barig for A-lu; an amount now lost for Lugal-ane; one lidga and one barig for Lugal-saga; one lidga and three barig for Lugal-[...]; two barig for Lugal-ezem; roughly one barig for Enlil-alsa; one barig of gunida-emmer for A-lu; three barig for Lugal-saga; and about one barig for Adda-[...]. Kur-mu-GAM-ra took delivery of the lot. Dated to the harvest month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (lidga) 3 barig of emmer, (by) the lidga-measure — A-lu. [x] — Lugal-ane. 1 (lidga) 1 barig — Lugal-saga. 1 (lidga) 3 barig — Lugal-[...]. 2 barig — Lugal-ezem. [x] 1(?) barig — Enlil-alsa. 1 barig of gunida-emmer — A-lu. 3 barig — Lugal-saga. 1(?) barig — Adda-[...]. Kur-mu-GAM-ra received (it). Month: "Harvest" (šeKIN-[ku₅]).
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(asz@c) 3(barig@c) ziz2 lid2-ga a-lu2 [x] lugal-an-ne2 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) lugal-sa6-ga 1(asz@c) 3(barig@c) lugal-[...] 2(barig@c) lugal-ezem [x] 1(barig@c)#? en-lil2-al-sa6 1(barig@c) gu2-nida a-lu2 3(barig@c) lugal-sa6-ga 1(barig@c)? ad-da-x kur-mu-GAM-ra szu ba-ti iti sze-KIN-[ku5]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 203 + frags.. 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; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P020617) — 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.