Position in chronology
UET 2, 0205a
About this tablet
A badly broken accounting tablet from the ancient city of Ur, written around 2700–2500 BCE in the archaic script that preceded classical cuneiform. It tallies large quantities of goods — 84 units of barley measured in a standard ration vessel, 23 head of young cattle under a temple administrator, 72 of another commodity — the everyday bookkeeping of an early urban institution. Tablets like this, excavated by Leonard Woolley at Ur, show that writing at this date was above all a tool of economic control: numbers first, words second.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger entry: 84 measures of barley, recorded against a standard ration-measure and what seems to be flour; 23 calves belonging to (or charged to) the temple administrator; and 72 units of a third item, perhaps horns, whose description is broken away. A final line survives only in scraps — another measured commodity assigned to someone — and the rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 8(N14) 4(N01) [= 84 units] — barley, (in the) NINDA2-measure (of the GIŠ.DAR type), GA, flour(?), flour(?); 2(N14) 3(N01) [= 23 units] — calf(s) (of/for) the temple administrator; 7(N14) 2(N01) [= 72 units] — horns(?) [...]; (Break) [...] — [...] NINDA2×[...]-measure(?), for(?) [...] (remainder broken)
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
8(N14@f) 4(N01@f) , SZE~a |NINDA2x(GISZ.DAR~a)| GA~a ZI~a ZI~a 2(N14@f) 3(N01@f) , AMAR SANGA~a# 7(N14@f) 2(N01@f) , SI [...] [...] , [...] |NINDA2xX|#? SZE3? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0205a. 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 (P005799) — 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.