Position in chronology
UET 2, 0010
About this tablet
An administrative roster from archaic Ur, in southern Iraq, written in the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2800–2600 BCE) — among the oldest legible documents from that city. Each surviving line pairs the numeral '1' with a name or title, such as 'the herald of AMA' or 'Lu-amar,' apparently counting individual people (or their allotments) one by one, with šita-priests noted at the end. The tablet is badly worn, so we see only fragments of what was once a routine head-count kept by an early urban bureaucracy — everyday paperwork from the dawn of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally list, one entry per line. The opening lines are broken, but we can make out mentions of a bread ration, a herald of AMA, and something involving a horn. Then come the countable entries: one for Lu-amar, one for Igi-bur, one for someone whose name begins with AB, one entry now illegible, one for Ak-An, one for a name ending in 'calf-bird,' and one more for the herald of AMA. The final two lines, written without numbers, note šita-priests of the AB — likely the officials or institution under whose account the list was kept. Much of the surface is too eroded to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] , [...] [...] — bread ration(?) [...] — the herald of AMA [...] — SI (horn?) 1 — Lu-amar ("Man-of-the-calf") 1 — Igi-bur 1 — AB-... (two signs illegible) 1 — ... (illegible) 1 — Ak(?)-An [...] 1 — ...-amar-bird(?) 1 — the herald of AMA (no numeral) — AB, šita-priest (no numeral) — AB, šita-priest(?) [...]
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
[...] , [...] [...] , PAD~a#? [...] , NIMGIR AMA~b [...] , SI# 1(N01@f) , LU2# AMAR 1(N01@f) , IGI BUR~a 1(N01@f) , AB~a X X 1(N01@f) , X X 1(N01@f) , AK~a#? AN [...] 1(N01@f) , X AMAR MUSZEN#? 1(N01@f) , NIMGIR# AMA~b# , AB~a SZITA~c , AB~a SZITA~c#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0010. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P005584) — 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.