Position in chronology
UET 2, 0071
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from the very early city of Ur, written around 2800 BCE, when writing was still close to its pictographic origins. It records repeated allotments — mostly of about 90 units of barley or barley products — assigned to officials or accounts identified by terse sign-groups, including a 'chief' and entries marked with the sign for 'calf' or 'junior'. It is bookkeeping, not literature: a snapshot of how one of the world's first urban administrations tracked grain moving through its institutions.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger with a series of near-identical entries. The first surviving line books 30 units against an account marked KAL, apparently of bread or prepared grain, for the chief official. Then come two entries of 90 units of barley (as bread or rations) each — one for the parties written ZI-ZI-NA, one for a 'calf' account or junior official whose name is broken away. A further entry of about 30 units follows under a heading that can no longer be read, then a wholly lost line, and finally roughly 90 units of a commodity written with the 'horn' sign, assigned to what may be a household and a junior official. The reverse of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] 3 tens (30) — KAL, GAR (bread?) — the chief (GAL), GIR2 1 sixty(?) + 3 tens (90) — barley, GAR (bread?) — ZI, ZI, NA 1 sixty + 3 tens (90) — barley, GAR (bread?) — calf/junior [...] [...] 3 tens(?) (30) — AN, ... (sign illegible) [...] — [...] 1 sixty(?) + 3 tens(?) (90?) — horn(s)/SI [...] — house(?), ME(?), calf/junior (blank entry — end of preserved text; reverse uninscribed)
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(N14@f) , KAL~b2 GAR , GAL~a# GIR2~a# 1(N34@f@t)? 3(N14@f) , SZE~a GAR , ZI~a# ZI~a NA~a 1(N34@f@t) 3(N14@f) , SZE~a GAR , AMAR [...] [...] 3(N14@f)#? , AN X [...] , [...] 1(N34@f@t)? 3(N14@f)#? , SI# [...] , E2~a#? ME~a#? AMAR# ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0071. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005645) — 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.