Position in chronology
UET 2, 0254
About this tablet
An administrative account from Ur in southern Iraq, written in the Early Dynastic period, nearly five thousand years ago. A scribe is tallying goods — copper, sheep, and seed grain — each entry opened by an impressed numeral. It is not literature but bookkeeping: the everyday paperwork by which an early urban institution kept track of what it took in and paid out, from a time when writing was still close to its origins as an accounting tool.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short inventory. The first entry records six of something now lost to damage. Then: one unit of copper, apparently delivered and received, with two further items of copper deposited; one entry involving sheep, its qualifying signs unclear; a broken quantity of seed, measured in a small capacity unit; and finally two sheep. The other side of the tablet is blank — the account simply ends here.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 6 [...] ... [...] 1 — copper ..., delivered(?), received(?); 2 ..., deposited — copper. 1 — ... (BU) ... (LAGAB) sheep. [n broken] — 1 (small measure) of seed. 2 — sheep. (reverse uninscribed)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
6(N01@f)# [...] , [...] 1(N01@f) , URUDU~a# DU? SZU# 2(N57) RU URUDU~a 1(N01@f)# , BU~a# LAGAB~b UDU~a X , 1(N04) NUMUN 2(N01@f) , UDU~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0254. 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: British Museum, London, UK (P005849) — 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.