Position in chronology
UET 2, 0191
About this tablet
A badly damaged administrative account from the very old city of Ur in southern Iraq, written around 2800–2600 BCE in the archaic phase of cuneiform, before the script could record full sentences. It is a tally: each surviving line pairs a quantity — repeatedly '1 large unit and 3' — with a commodity such as daggers, horns, onions, and other goods whose names we can read but no longer securely identify. Excavated by Leonard Woolley's expedition (field number U.12932), it is a scrap of the everyday bookkeeping that literacy was invented to do.
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 lost. What survives reads like a checklist: an entry connected to 'the Land,' then three large fine daggers; then repeated batches of thirteen — one big unit plus three — of various goods: a product called UR4-MUD, horns, something labeled NAM2, onions with an axe or container, and an assortment involving horn, a PA-official or category, and a vessel. One line seems to note that something for the house or estate was not delivered. After that the tablet breaks; a few more quantities of one large unit each follow, but what they counted is gone, and the last line is only traces.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, fragmentary account) [...] : [...] of the Land (KALAM) [...] 3 units : large fine daggers (GIR2 SAL GAL) 1 (N22-unit) 3 units : UR4-MUD (a commodity of unknown identity) 1 (N22-unit) 3 units : SI A (horn[s] ...) [...] : [...] ... (sign illegible) 1 (N22-unit) 3 units : NAM2 A 1 (N22-unit) 3 units : SUM (onions?) — TUN3 (no number preserved) : SI, BU, PA, MA (horn(?) ... overseer(?) ... container(?)) 1 (N22-unit) 3 units : the house/estate (E2) ... NE ... not delivered (NU DU) (Break) [...] : [...] 1 (N22-unit)[...] : [...] 1 (N22-unit) [...] : [...] (final line) : ... [...] (traces only)
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
[...] , [...] KALAM~a# [...] 3(N01@f) , GIR2~a SAL GAL~a 1(N22@f) 3(N01@f) , UR4~a MUD 1(N22@f) 3(N01@f) , SI A [...] , [...] X 1(N22) 3(N01@f) , NAM2 A 1(N22@f) 3(N01@f) , SUM~b TUN3~a , SI BU~a PA~a MA 1(N22@f) 3(N01@f) , E2~a NE~a NU DU [...] , [...] 1(N22@f)# , [...] 1(N22@f) [...] , [...] , X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0191. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005779) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.