Position in chronology
JANES 18, 48 19
About this tablet
A small, badly broken administrative receipt from Nippur, dated by its formula to the reign of Išbi-Erra, the founder of the Isin dynasty who took over southern Mesopotamia as the Ur III empire collapsed (early second millennium BCE). It records quantities of goods being disbursed, notes that this document is a copy of another tablet, and was sealed by an official whose scribe was named Lu-Nin-[...]. Even in ruins, it shows the machinery of bookkeeping — duplicates, seals, month and year dates — running smoothly under a new royal house.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Only scraps survive: an entry for 1 of something, another for 12 of something, taken from a person or place whose name is lost, and marked as disbursed. The document identifies itself as a duplicate copy of another record and carries the seal of an official whose name is broken away. It was dated by month and by a year of Išbi-Erra, 'king of his land.' The seal or closing line names the scribe, Lu-Nin-[...]. Everything else is lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 [...] 12 [...] from ... [...] ... [...] disbursed(?) [...] copy of [...] ... [...] seal of ...-[...] month: [...] [year: ...] Išbi-Erra, king of [his] land. Lu-Nin-[...], scribe [...]
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
1(disz) [...] 1(u) 2(disz) [...] ki x [...] x [...] ba-[...] gaba-ri [...] x [...] kiszib3 x-[...] iti [...] [...] isz-bi#-er3-[ra] lugal ma-da-[na] lu2-nin#-[...] dub-sar [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Early Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1900 BC)) — JANES 18, 48 19. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: OIM A30014 (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P200683). 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.