Position in chronology
UET 2, 0207
About this tablet
A small broken account tablet from the city of Ur, written in the Early Dynastic period nearly five thousand years ago — among the earliest written records from that city. It lists small quantities of items or personnel, one or five at a time, next to category signs: possibly guards, workmen, and — intriguingly — what may be an early word for 'statue' or 'image'. It is not a story or a letter but everyday bookkeeping, the kind of ledger from which writing itself grew.
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 broken away. What survives reads like ledger lines: one of something connected with 'day' or the ME-category, one of the UR-category (perhaps a guard or worker), five of what may be statues or images, and five men whose description is lost. After a gap, two more single-item entries follow, but the words beside the numbers are gone. The beginning and end of the account are lost entirely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] ... [...] 1: U4 ME (day/ME-item) 1: UR (guard/personnel designation?) 5: ALAN A (statues/images? ... A) 5: men of ... (LU2 ...) (Break) [...]: [...] 1: [...] 1: [...]
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 , [...] 1(N01@f) , U4 ME~a 1(N01@f) , UR~a#? 5(N01@f) , ALAN~a A 5(N01@f) , LU2 X [...] , [...] 1(N01@f) , [...] 1(N01@f) , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0207. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005802) — 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.