Position in chronology
UET 2, 0194
About this tablet
A badly damaged administrative tablet from the very early city of Ur, written around 2800–2600 BCE in the archaic period of cuneiform. What survives are a few ledger entries: quantities (6, 2, 2) set against institutional titles such as the temple administrator (SANGA) and other officials. It is a scrap of the earliest bureaucratic record-keeping — accounting older than almost all literature — though too broken to say exactly what was being counted.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of an account book. The first readable line is mostly gone — something about contents being delivered. Then come three entries: six units credited to the temple administrator Amar (or a junior temple official), two units against the ALAN–AMA entry (perhaps an official's title), and two units against an overseer whose name is lost. The rest of the tablet is broken away, and the remaining lines cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) [...] : [...] ... interior/contents — delivered [...] 6 : the temple administrator (SANGA) — Amar (calf/junior official) 2 : ALAN (statue/figure?) — AMA (the 'mother'-official) 2 : PA (overseer?) ... [...] [...] : [...] (remainder broken; the other surfaces are 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 SZA3~a1 DU# [...] 6(N01@f)# , SANGA~a AMAR 2(N01@f) , ALAN~a AMA~b 2(N01@f) , PA~a X [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0194. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P005785) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.