Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 05
About this tablet
A badly broken fragment of an Early Dynastic tablet excavated at Ur in southern Iraq, now in the British Museum (excavation number U.30721). It dates to roughly 2600–2400 BCE, when writing was still close to its origins and texts often consist of terse sign clusters rather than full sentences. The surviving signs — 'tablet' appearing twice, 'addition', and 'syrup/honey' — suggest an administrative or accounting document, but too little remains to reconstruct the transaction. Its value lies in what it shows about record-keeping at Ur centuries before the city's famous royal tombs and ziggurat.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Only scraps of this record survive. The opening lines are strings of signs we can no longer make sense of — possibly entries involving a container and a commodity. Midway through, the word 'tablet' appears twice, as if the scribe were referring to other written records, followed by signs that may mean something was done or returned. After a break, the closing lines mention 'mother' or a similar term, two entries marked 'addition', and finally 'syrup' (or honey) — likely the last items in a damaged account. The back of the tablet is blank or broken away; the rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 1. NI NI — ... (two NI signs; perhaps 'oil'?) ... 2. MA NI AN NA — a container(?) ... AN ... (reading of the sign cluster uncertain) 3. NA NI — ... 4. NA NI — ... 5. NI ŠEŠ — ... brother(?) ... 6. (one illegible sign) 7. Tablet [...] 8. Tablet ... (DUB NE) 9. AK NIM GI₄ — ... performed(?) ... returned(?) ... 10. (illegible sign) SI — ... horn(?)/SI ... (Break) 11. Mother(?) (AMA) [...] 12. Addition(?) (DAH) [...] 13. Addition(?) (DAH) ... tablet ... syrup/honey (LAL₃) (reverse: uninscribed / broken away)
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.
Transliteration
NI NI# MA# NI# AN NA NA NI NA NI NI SZESZ# x DUB [...] DUB NE# AK NIM GI4 x SI [...] AMA# [...] DAH# [...] DAH# NI DUB# LAL3#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 05. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P448992) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.