Position in chronology
UET 2, 0114
About this tablet
A small, badly worn accounting tablet from Ur in southern Iraq, written in the Early Dynastic period (early third millennium BCE) — among the oldest layers of writing from that city. The surviving entries count livestock and goods: calves, sheep, a vessel of some kind, and quantities booked under a sanga, a temple administrator. The final lines tally deficits — amounts still outstanding — showing that even at this remote date, scribes were already tracking not just what came in, but what was owed. The tablet is too damaged for us to know whose account this was or what transaction lay behind it.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger, most of it eroded away. What survives reads roughly: so many units of something belonging to 'the Land'; one large measure connected with a vessel and calves; one large measure of sheep; thirty-odd units credited to the temple administrator's account for young animals. Three lines in the middle are completely lost. The closing entries on the back record shortfalls: four large units and twenty booked as a deficit, and another fifty likewise booked as a deficit under a category we can no longer identify. In short: a stock count with the arrears totted up at the end — the rest is gone.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] , [...] [...] 1(N14) [= 10 units?] , [...] of the Land (KALAM) 1(N51) , milk(?)-vessel(s) — calves 1(N51) , sheep, sheep [...] 3(N14) [= 30 units?] , the sanga-official — young animals (AMAR) (Break — three lines lost) [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] (reverse / final section) 4(N51) 2(N14@f) , deficit — deposited (LA2 GAR) 5(N14@f) , deficit — deposited; MUŠ3 [...]
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] 1(N14)# , [...] KALAM~a# 1(N51) , |DUG~axHI| AMAR 1(N51) , UDU~a UDU~a [...] 3(N14) , SANGA~a AMAR [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 4(N51) 2(N14@f) , LA2 GAR 5(N14@f) , LA2 GAR MUSZ3~a#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0114. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005694) — 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.