Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 02
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from the ancient city of Ur, written in the Early Dynastic period (mid-third millennium BCE). It is a running tally of goats — nanny goats and young kids, male and female — each entry paired with the name of the person responsible for or receiving the animal. Documents like this are the everyday ledgers of an early urban economy: herds were institutional property, and every animal handed out had to be accounted for by name.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a goat ledger. One female kid goes to a man whose name is partly illegible (something ending in '-men'); one nanny goat goes to Zur-zur — the next line is too damaged to read. One young male kid goes to En-kulaba-si, one female kid to Nanna-mud, another female kid to Igi-gigi, and two male kids to someone whose name is lost where the tablet breaks off. In short: seven or so goats distributed among at least five named individuals, recorded by an administrator at Ur.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [1] female kid — X-me-en (name partly illegible) [1] nanny goat — Zur-zur ... ... [...] (line too damaged to read) 1 (male) kid — En-kulaba-si 1 female kid — Nanna-mud 1 female kid — Igi-gigi 2 (male) kids — [...] (recipient's name lost in break)
Our translation engine — Fable 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.
Engine notes
read from photo9 uncertain terms ↓
- asz2-gar3 — Conventionally read as 'ram' (adult male sheep) in Early Dynastic Ur texts; the precise proto-cuneiform sign sequence and species determination remain debated.
- ud5 — Read as 'she-goat' or 'nanny-goat'; occasionally distinguished from masz2 (billy-goat/kid) but age and sex categories are not always unambiguous from the sign alone.
- masz2 — Proto-cuneiform sign for goat or kid; adult vs. juvenile, male vs. female not always determinable from the sign alone.
- zur-zur — A personal name or epithet; the reduplication suggests it may be a nickname or occupational title, but its meaning is not established.
- x-me-en — Partially broken name or phrase; the initial sign is unread. 'me-en' could be a suffix or part of a compound name.
- en-kul-aba4-si — A personal name meaning approximately 'Lord, may Kulaba be satisfied/completed'; Kulaba is a district of Uruk, making this a theophoric or toponym-based name — unusual but attested.
- nanna-mud — Personal name invoking Nanna (moon god of Ur); mud may mean 'born of' or 'offspring of', giving 'offspring of Nanna'.
- igi-gi-gi — Personal name with reduplication; possibly related to igi ('eye') or gi ('reed/to return'); exact meaning uncertain.
- N01@f — The '@f' diacritic in the transliteration indicates a specific formal or rotated variant of the basic unit numeral; functionally equivalent to a count of '1' for translation purposes.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a small, rounded clay tablet photographed from multiple angles, carrying the British Museum field number U.30718 (visible on the label in the fourth view). The obverse (top-centre image) shows clearly ruled horizontal lines dividing the surface into registers or cases, with impressed numeral wedges (the N01 signs) visible at the left of each case and what appear to be sign groups to their right. At least five or six such ruled cases are visible. Individual signs are small and shallow; the wedge impressions are legible in the better-lit upper registers but become indistinct toward the lower portion, consistent with the transliteration's trailing 'x x [x]' and final lacuna. The right-edge view confirms text continues onto the reverse or edge. I can discern numeral impressions matching the N01 counts (single wedge-strokes), and the case divisions align with the transliteration's line structure. The personal names (En-kul-aba-si, Nanna-mud, Igi-gi-gi) and animal logograms (asz2-gar3 = ram, ud5 = she-goat, masz2 = billy-goat/kid) cannot be individually verified at this resolution, but the overall layout — numerals in left sub-column, commodity plus name in right sub-column — is fully consistent with Early Dynastic Ur administrative practice. No clear discrepancies between photo and transliteration detected, though the damaged lower lines cannot be confirmed visually.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 16, 2026 · 2139 in / 1175 out tokens
Transliteration
[1(N01@f)] asz2#-gar3 x-me-en [1(N01@f)] ud5 zur#-zur x x [x] 1(N01@f) masz2 en-kul-aba4-si 1(N01@f) asz2-gar3 nanna#-mud 1(N01@f) asz2-gar3 igi-gi-gi 2(N01@f) masz2 [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P448989) — 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.