Position in chronology
JANES 18, 41 02
About this tablet
A small administrative receipt from Nippur, written under King Išbi-Erra of Isin in the chaotic decades after the fall of the Ur III empire, around 2000 BCE. It records thirty-one loaves of bread issued as transported goods involving a man named Anamu, and it is dated by the king's year-name commemorating the building of a fortification wall called 'Ištar loves Išbi-Erra.' A final note names the responsible official: a perfumer in the service of the god Enlil, whose great temple dominated Nippur. Such slips are the everyday paperwork behind temple provisioning.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Thirty-one loaves of bread, logged as goods for transport, connected with a man named Anamu; the entry notes they are on deposit with someone whose name is now broken away. A gap follows. The date: the month of Sowing, in the year the wall named 'Ištar loves Išbi-Erra' was built. The final lines identify the official involved — a man whose name is partly lost (...-ane), the perfumer attached to the temple of Enlil.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine31 loaves of bread, goods for transport (níg-ki-lah), (for/of) Anamu; available with [...]; [...] (break) Month: "Sowing" (Šu-numuna). Year: "The wall (named) 'Eštar-tāram-Išbi-Erra' ('Ištar-loves-Išbi-Erra') was built." [...]-ane, the perfumer (oil-presser) of Enlil.
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
3(u) 1(disz) ninda nig2-ki-lah5 a#-na-mu [x]-da-gal2 [...] iti szu-numun-a mu bad3 esz18-dar-ta2-ra-am-isz-bi-er3-ra ba-du3 [x]-an-ne2 i3-ra2-ra2 en-lil2-la2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Early Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1900 BC)) — JANES 18, 41 02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: OIM A29996 (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P200668). 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.