Position in chronology
UET 2, 0086
About this tablet
An administrative account from the city of Ur in the Early Dynastic period, around 2800–2600 BCE — among the earliest written records from that famous site, excavated by Leonard Woolley (field number U.12825). The surviving entries count livestock and barley: notably eighty calves attached to a courtyard (likely a temple precinct), alongside references to Ur itself and to 'the Land' (Sumer). It is bookkeeping, not literature — a snapshot of how an early urban institution tracked its animals and grain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The opening lines are broken; a figure of ten of something once stood there. What can be read then lists: an entry involving an official (or classifying mark), a horn, and the city of Ur; a large count — six hundred — connected with wood, an emblem or standard, and 'the Land'; then eighty calves belonging to the courtyard. A damaged line mentions a storage vessel and a calf, and the account closes with barley set aside as rations or a deposit. The back of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] ... [...] 1(N14) [= 10] [...] ... [...] ... PA-official(?), horn, Ur (URI5); 1(N45) [= 600] ... wood, "standard(+IB)" emblem, TI(?), of the Land (kalam); 8(N14) [= 80] calves of the courtyard; [...] ... [...] DUG×HI-vessel(?), calf(?); ... barley — deposited (as) rations. (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
[...] , [...] 1(N14) [...] , [...] , PA~a SI URI5 1(N45) , GISZ |URI3~a+IB~a| TI KALAM~a 8(N14) , AMAR KISAL~b1 [...] , [...] |DUG~axHI|# AMAR# , SZE~a GAR
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0086. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005661) — 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.