Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 42
About this tablet
A small, badly worn accounting tablet from the ancient city of Ur, written in the Early Dynastic period near the dawn of writing. It is a simple ledger: four or five lines, each pairing a quantity (mostly the same amount, roughly thirteen units in the archaic counting system) with a personal name — one of them apparently formed with the goddess Inanna's name. The commodity being counted is not stated or is lost, but tablets like this are the everyday distribution records of an early urban administration, listing who received or delivered a fixed allotment.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short distribution list. Four people — one whose name invokes Inanna, two whose names begin with Nun (one is Nun-da), and one whose name begins with Ur — each receive or account for the same quantity, written as one large-unit and three small-unit number signs (about thirteen units in the archaic system). A fifth man, Ur-ig-A, gets just one unit. The final line is a short administrative tag, perhaps a scribe's or overseer's mark, whose exact meaning is lost. Several names are broken off where the tablet is damaged.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[1(N22)] 3(N01) — Inanna-ak(?) [1(N22)] 3(N01) — Nun-[...] 1(N22) 3(N01) — Nun-da [...] 1(N22) 3(N01) — Ur-[...] 1(N01) — Ur-ig-A AK(?) PA A (closing notation, function unclear)
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 photo5 uncertain terms ↓
- inanna#? — The # and ? in the transliteration signal that the reading is uncertain. The sign could be the divine name Inanna (written with the INANNA sign), but erosion prevents certainty. The star-like impression visible in the photo is consistent with this reading but not conclusive.
- N22@f / N01@f — These are proto-cuneiform numerical signs. N22 represents a larger capacity/count unit and N01 the basic unit. The '@f' flag indicates a specific form variant. Without a surviving commodity header or total line, what precisely is being counted (grain, oil, persons, animals, etc.) cannot be determined.
- nun-[...] / nun-da-[...] — Personal or institutional names beginning with 'Nun-' (perhaps referencing the city of Eridu or a title). The second element is broken away; restoration is impossible without parallels.
- ur-ig!-A — A personal name. The '!' indicates an emendation or correction in the transliteration; the sign read as 'ig' may be damaged or atypical. 'Ur-' names (lit. 'servant/dog of [deity]') are common in ED onomastics.
- AK# PA A — Final line; signs are uncertain (#). Could represent a verb phrase, a summary notation, or signs whose function is unclear. 'AK' can mean 'to do/make'; 'PA' is a branch/official sign; 'A' may be a water determinative, a ration sign, or a phonetic complement. The combination resists confident interpretation.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination: The tablet is a small, rounded clay lump photographed from multiple angles. The surface is noticeably eroded and the clay a warm reddish-brown. On the obverse (centre-top and bottom views) I can make out rows of impressed wedge-clusters and what appear to be N01-type circular impressions alongside more complex sign groups; the uppermost register on the obverse shows a star-like or cross-shaped sign that could be DINGIR or AN, consistent with a divine name determinative (pointing toward 'Inanna'). A horizontal ruling is visible dividing the face into sections, matching the line-by-line structure of the transliteration. The reverse and edges (centre-left and right panels) show fewer clear signs; the third view from the top appears nearly blank, consistent with the edge or a lightly inscribed reverse. I cannot independently verify the individual N22 impressions with confidence at this resolution, nor clearly read the final line 'AK PA A'. The transliteration supplied by the project matches the general sign density and layout I observe, but specific sign identifications beyond the broad numerical clusters and the possible divine-name sign cannot be confirmed from the photo. The very early ED date and proto-cuneiform numeral system place this firmly in the archaic administrative corpus known from Ur and Jemdet Nasr; N22 and N01 are standard capacity numerals whose exact commodity referent is lost without a surviving total or header sign.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 16, 2026 · 1925 in / 1112 out tokens
Transliteration
[1(N22@f)] 3(N01@f)# inanna#?-ak [1(N22@f)] 3(N01@f) , nun-[...] 1(N22@f) 3(N01@f) , nun-da# [...] 1(N22@f)# 3(N01@f)# , ur#-[...] 1(N01@f) , ur-ig!-A AK#? PA A
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 42. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P449029) — 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.