Position in chronology
UET 2, 0077
About this tablet
A badly damaged administrative tablet from archaic Ur, written in the Early Dynastic period around 2800 BCE — among the earliest written records from that city. What survives are a few entries of an account listing quantities of foodstuffs, apparently dairy fat or cream and possibly onions, counted in an archaic capacity measure. It belongs to the everyday bookkeeping of an early urban institution, from a stage of writing before connected sentences, when tablets recorded only numbers, goods, and names.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a torn page of a warehouse ledger. The first line is too broken to read beyond a few sign traces. Then come three surviving entries: five measures of a dairy product — cream or fat — of the large sort; three measures involving onions and more of the dairy product; and two measures of something whose designation is now unclear, perhaps tied to an institution or an official. Everything before, after, and around these lines is lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, fragmentary) [...] ... LUM, KA(?), deficit(?) [...] 5 (N19-measures): cream/dairy fat, large [...] 3 (N19-measures): onions(?), cream/dairy fat, onions(?) [...] 2 (N19-measures): ME(?), NUN(?) [...] (remainder of the tablet broken)
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
[...] , [...] LUM# KA~a LA2 [...] 5(N19@f)# , GARA2~a GAL~a [...] 3(N19@f) , SUM~b GARA2~a SUM~b [...] 2(N19@f) , ME~a#? NUN~a# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0077. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005651) — 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.