Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 59
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic accounting tablet from the ancient city of Ur, excavated by the British Museum expedition (excavation number U.18381 is stamped on its edge). It is a barley ledger: a column of small quantities set against names or categories of people, closed out by a summary line stating the barley available. The surface is so worn that almost none of the recipients can be identified, but the tablet is a good specimen of the everyday grain bookkeeping that sustained one of Mesopotamia's oldest cities nearly 4,500 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a barley account. It lists a series of small allotments — three units, three, three, four, then several entries of two, followed by a run of single units — each assigned to a person or category whose name is now mostly worn away. One entry seems to name someone called UR, another a party written ŠEŠ+IB, and one carries the label 'great' (a senior title or size marker). The list closes with the bottom line: sixty units of barley are on hand. Nearly all the individual names are too eroded to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 3 [each] — [...] 3 — [...] 3 — ... (illegible) 4 — ... (illegible) 2 — ... (illegible) 2 — [...] 2 — ... ... UR (personal name or personnel designation) 1(?) — ŠEŠ+IB (name or category) 1(?) — ... 1(?) — ... 1(?) — GAL-... (a 'great/senior' title or qualifier; second sign illegible) 1(?) — ... 2 — ... (total:) 60 (6 × 10) — barley on hand.
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
3(N01@f)# , [...] 3(N01@f)# , [...] 3(N01@f) , x x 4(N01@f) , x x 2(N01@f)# , x x 2(N01@f)# , [...] 2(N01@f)# , x x x UR# 1(N01@f)#? |SZESZ+IB|# 1(N01@f)#? , x 1(N01@f)#? , x 1(N01@f)#? , GAL x 1(N01@f)#? , x 2(N01@f)# , x 6(N14@f) , sze gal2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 59. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P449046) — 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.