Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 43
About this tablet
A badly worn scrap of accounting from Ur in southern Iraq, written in the Early Dynastic period nearly 5,000 years ago — part of the famous 'archaic texts of Ur' excavated at Tell Muqayyar. Only a few entries survive: quantities of goods (2, 33, 20, 30, 3) set against a festival or a person named Ama-endu, and a closing mark that may name an overseer or record that the transaction was carried out. Even in ruins it shows the earliest machinery of bookkeeping: numbers, names, and accountability pressed into clay.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of an account sheet. The readable entries say something like: 2 large measures — for the festival, or for a person called Ama-endu; then 33 of something now lost; then an item written with a sign we can no longer identify; then 20 units of a commodity, possibly clay or tablets; then 30 more of something, and 3 of something else, both broken away. The last surviving line seems to note the responsible official, or that the work was done. The rest of the tablet is too damaged to read, and the back is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 2 (large measures) — festival(?) (of) Ama-endu 33 [...] [...] ... (an unidentified archaic sign, UET 2 no. 67?) 20 — IM(?) (clay/tablets? — commodity unclear) 30 [...] 3(?) [...] PA (overseer?) AK(?) (— delivered/made?) (remainder lost; reverse uninscribed or effaced)
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
2(N22@f) , EZEM#? ama-en-du10# 3(N14@f) 3(N01@f) , [...] [...] x UET2_067#? 2(N14@f) , IM#? 3(N14@f) [...] 3(N01@f)? [...] PA AK#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 43. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P449030) — 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.