Position in chronology
MRAH O.5011
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative record (mid-third millennium BCE) tracking issues of a type of flour called gamur, carefully measured out with a bronze sila-cup. The recipients are palace or temple kitchen staff — a cupbearer and a cook, both named Ur-gu — with the goods tied to specific households and conveyed under a livestock official. It is a small window into the provisioning bureaucracy of an early Sumerian institution, where even modest amounts of flour were weighed, named, and filed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a flour-issue receipt. A quantity of gamur flour — at least two barig, measured with the official bronze liter-cup — went to Ur-gu the cupbearer, charged to the house of NE-DAG, apparently in connection with the service table; a man named Ab-zi is also listed. A smaller amount, two ban of the same flour, went to another Ur-gu, the cook, for the cook's establishment (or perhaps for the god Ištaran). The transaction was handled by Giri-ni, the livestock overseer. Everyday kitchen accounting from a Sumerian institution some 4,500 years ago.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [n gur(?)] 2 barig of gamur-flour, (measured by) the bronze sila: Ur-gu, the cupbearer, (of/for) the house of NE-DAG(?); the table(?) ... GA-duhum(?); Ab-zi. 2 ban of gamur-flour: Ur-gu, the cook, (for) the house of the cook(?); (reverse) Ištaran; Giri-ni, the chief livestock administrator.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[n] 2(barig@c) gamurx(LAK490) sila3 zabar ur-gu sagi e2 NE-DAG? banszur#? sag-x? GA?-duh-hum ab-zi 2(ban2@c) gamurx(LAK490) ur-gu muhaldim e2 muhaldim? isztaran giri3-ni szusz3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — MRAH O.5011. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium (P452985) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.