Position in chronology
UET 2, 0126
About this tablet
A small, badly worn accounting tablet from archaic Ur, written around 2700–2600 BCE, in one of the earliest phases of writing at that city. It is a tally: each surviving line counts one unit — likely persons, animals (the sign for 'calf' opens and closes the preserved text), or allotments — identified by short sign clusters that may be personal names, such as Lugal-ME-SI. Documents like this are the raw paperwork of the world's first urban institutions, from centuries before connected sentences were commonly written down.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a checklist where nearly every entry starts with the number one. The top line is broken but mentions a calf. Then four countable entries follow, each tagged with a name or label: one for someone or something called Gara-NE-pap-giš-PA; one marked with signs for 'hand,' 'interior,' and 'water'; one for a person named Lugal-ME-SI; and one involving a jar and a man. The last legible line, again damaged, mentions calves once more. The rest of the tablet is worn away, so we cannot tell what institution kept this count or why.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] ... [...] calf (AMAR) 1 — Gara-NE-pap-giš-PA 1 — ŠU₂+2(N57), ŠA₃, A ("... heart/interior, water") 1 — Lugal-ME-SI 1 — DUG×ḪI (a vessel), a man/person (LU₂) [...] ... [...] calf(?), calf (remainder broken; reverse uninscribed or effaced)
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
[...] , [...] AMAR 1(N01@f) , GARA2~a NE~a PAP~a GISZ~v PA~a 1(N01@f) , |SZU2.2(N57)| SZA3~a1 A 1(N01@f) , LUGAL ME~a SI 1(N01@f) , |DUG~axHI| LU2 [...] , [...] AMAR#? AMAR
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0126. 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 (P005706) — 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.