Position in chronology
UET 2, 0170
About this tablet
A small administrative account from Ur in southern Iraq, written in the Early Dynastic period (early third millennium BCE), when writing was still largely a bookkeeping tool. The surviving entries record quantities of goods or personnel — including an entry for the 'great house' (the palace or main institutional household) and groups of workers — closed by what appear to be the names of the responsible officials. The tablet is badly worn and broken, so the exact transaction cannot be reconstructed, but it is a genuine piece of the earliest urban accounting from one of the world's first cities.
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 now illegible. The readable lines record: four units of something involving soapwort or natron; one unit of a commodity written 'A'; one unit assigned to the great house — the palace; ten units under an official designated NAM2; at least twenty men, likely laborers; and one unit of a top-grade commodity whose name is damaged. Two entries at the end carry no numbers and seem to name the people who signed off — one called Amar-EN2-E2, the other Lugal-BU-PA. The opening lines and several entries in between are broken away and lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] : [...] [...] : [...] garden-plot(?) ... [broken] 4 (units) : ... horn(?) (and) soapwort/natron 1 (unit) : water(?) (A) 1 (unit) : the great house (palace) [...] : [...] [...] : [...], first quality, ... (UR) 10 (units) : NAM2 (an official/category) 20 [+ ...] (units) : male workers(?) [...] 1 [+ ...] (unit) : ..., first quality, SUG5 (no number) : Amar-EN2-E2 (personal name?) (no number) : Lugal-BU-PA, the pure(?) (personal name/title?)
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
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] SAR~a#? X 4(N01@f) , X SI NAGA~a 1(N01@f) , A 1(N01@f) , E2~a# GAL~a [...] , [...] [...] , [...] SAG UR~a 1(N14@f) , NAM2 2(N14@f)# [...] , ERIM~a#? [...] 1(N01@f)# [...] , X SAG SUG5 , AMAR EN2 E2~a , LUGAL# BU~a PA~a SIKIL?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0170. 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 (P005756) — 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.