Position in chronology
UET 2, 0221
About this tablet
A badly damaged accounting tablet from the ancient city of Ur, written in the Early Dynastic period — among the earlier stages of writing, when signs were still close to pictures. The surviving entries count livestock and related goods: five sheep in one line, seven of something connected with a storehouse, fodder and a calf in another, and a subtotal of about 102 units near the end. It is a scrap of everyday bookkeeping from one of the world's first cities, showing how early administrators tracked animals and provisions long before writing was used for literature.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What remains legible is a running tally. One entry logs 5 sheep, with some qualifying notations — one of which may mark the entry as cancelled. Another line records 7 of something tied to a storehouse, along with fodder and a calf. A further line preserves the number 10, and near the end a larger figure of 102 units appears, probably a total or a bigger consignment. Several lines in between and the closing entries are too broken to read; the rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 5 (units): sheep — AK — SAR — NU (entry perhaps voided) [...] , [...] ... (illegible) 7 (units): variegated(?) ... storehouse — fodder-plant — water(?) — calf [...] 10 (units), [...] (line lost) (line lost) [...] 1(N34) 4(N14) 2(N01) (= 102 units) , ... [...] (line lost) (Remainder of the tablet 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
5(N01) , UDU~a AK~a SAR~a NU [...] , [...] X 7(N01) , DAR~a E2~a U2~a A AMAR [...] 1(N14) , [...] , [...] , [...] [...] 1(N34)# 4(N14) 2(N01) , X [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0221. 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 (P005817) — 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.