Position in chronology
UET 2, 0361
About this tablet
A badly broken accounting tablet from the city of Ur in southern Iraq, written around 2800–2600 BCE, at the very dawn of literate administration. The scribe recorded quantities — the first entry measures plots of field — against terse labels naming a lord (en), possibly the distant land of Dilmun (Bahrain and the Gulf coast), and a king. Even in fragments, it shows a city government already counting land and goods and tying them to named offices and places, centuries before connected sentences were commonly written.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger, most of it lost. The first line books a large parcel of farmland — roughly '6 big units, 1 middle unit, 3 small units' in the old area notation. A broken entry seems to mention Dilmun, the Gulf trading land. Then: a quantity of thirty-odd units charged to the lord (the en), apparently with jars; ten units under a heading involving AN and perhaps water; another thirteen-odd units for something 'done' or 'delivered'; and a further tally of seventy-plus units whose label is gone. Near the end the word 'king' survives, then the text breaks off entirely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineobverse 6(N14) 1(N22) 3(N01) — field (GAN2) [...] — [...] ... Dilmun(?) 3(N14) 1(N22) 3(N01) — the en (lord) ... jar(?) ... 1(N14) — AN ... water(?) ... ME(?) 1(N14) 1(N22) 3(N01) — [...] ... AK ('made'/'performed'?) [...] 7(N14) 1(N22)(?) 1(N01) [...] — [...] — the king (LUGAL) [...] — [...]
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
6(N14@f) 1(N22@f) 3(N01@f) , GAN2 [...] , [...] X DILMUN#? 3(N14@f) 1(N22@f) 3(N01@f) , EN~a DUG~a? X 1(N14@f) , AN LA~e? A ME~a#? 1(N14@f) 1(N22@f) 3(N01@f) , [...] AK~a [...] 7(N14@f)# 1(N22@f)#? 1(N01@f)# [...] , [...] , LUGAL [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0361. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005948) — 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.