Position in chronology
UET 2, 0187
About this tablet
A small, badly broken accounting tablet from the city of Ur, written in the archaic Early Dynastic script around 2800 BCE — among the oldest written documents from that city. What survives is a column of numbered entries: quantities of two and three set against terse sign-groups naming commodities, offices, or recipients (including signs later read as 'land', 'crown', and 'horn'). It is the everyday bookkeeping of an early urban institution, from a stage of writing when signs recorded things and numbers rather than full sentences.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet, most of it lost. The readable entries run: two of something labelled KALAM-MEN-A; two of SI-KALAM-A; three of a MA-container(?) with a garden plant; then, after a gap, three items marked IGI, and three single-unit entries whose labels are broken away. Near the end comes a larger compound figure — a ten-unit, a mid-size unit, and a single unit together — followed by an entry marked 'small'. Whoever wrote it was counting goods or allotments against short labels for their type or their recipient; the beginning, the end, and the back of the tablet are gone or blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, column of case-divided entries; beginning broken) [...] ... HI (mixed?) [...] [...] 2: KALAM, MEN, A 2: SI, KALAM, A 3: MA (container?), (ZU+ZU)-SAR (a garden plant?), ... [...] [...] : [...] 3: IGI [...] 1: ME [...] 1: [...] 1: [...] [...] : [...] 1(N14) 1(N22) 1(N01) [i.e. a compound total: one 'ten' unit, one N22 unit, one single unit] [...] : [...] ... : TUR (small?) ... [...] (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
[...] , X HI [...] [...] 2(N01@f)# , KALAM~a MEN~a A 2(N01@f) , SI KALAM~a A 3(N01@f) , MA |(ZU&ZU).SAR~a| X [...] [...] , [...] 3(N01@f) , IGI [...] 1(N01@f) , ME~a [...] 1(N01@f) , [...] 1(N01@f)# , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14@f) 1(N22@f) 1(N01@f) [...] , [...] , TUR X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0187. 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 (P005775) — 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.