Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 32
About this tablet
A badly worn administrative tablet from the city of Ur, written in the Early Dynastic period (early third millennium BCE), now in the British Museum. It is a simple roster: each surviving line records the numeral 'one' followed by a personal name — people such as Amar-sar, Nanna-šul, and Amar-ib — most likely each receiving or owing a single unit of some commodity, perhaps connected with the aromatics (ŠIM) mentioned in the first line. Lists like this are among humanity's earliest bookkeeping, showing how a temple or household administration tracked allotments person by person nearly five thousand years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a distribution list, one unit per person. The heading, mostly lost, seems to involve aromatics or a related commodity. Then come the entries: one for Amar-sar; one for a man whose name begins Ur-; one for Nanna-šul; one marked with a processing or handling notation; one for someone named after the snake-god Nirah; one for Ama-IGI-BUR; one for Ba-za; one for Amar-ib; one for another man named after the moon-god Nanna; one for a person whose name ends in -PA; and one more entry too damaged to read. The rest of the tablet is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [1 , ...] ... aromatics(?) (ŠIM) [1 , (name lost)] [1] , Amar-sar [1] , Ur-[...] [1] , Nanna-šul(?) 1 , ... DU8 ŠU [sila(?)] 1 , [...]-Nirah(?) 1 , Ama-IGI-BUR 1 , Ba-za 1 , Amar-ib [1] , Nanna-[...] 1 , [...]-PA 1 , ... [...] (remainder broken)
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
[1(N01@f) , ...] SZIM# [1(N01@f) , ...] [1(N01@f)] , amar-sar# [1(N01@f)] , ur-[...] [1(N01@f)] , nannax(|SZESZ.NA|)#-szul#? 1(N01@f) , DU8 SZU [SILA3?] 1(N01@f) [...]-nirahx(UET2_153)#? 1(N01@f) , ama-IGI-BUR 1(N01@f) , ba-za7 1(N01@f) , amar-ib [1(N01@f)] , nannax(|SZESZ.NA|)#-[...] 1(N01@f) [...] PA 1(N01@f) , x [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 32. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P449019) — 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.