Position in chronology
JANES 18, 48 22
About this tablet
A small administrative receipt from Nippur in southern Iraq, early second millennium BCE. It records a tiny outlay — four loaves of bread counted as a ration for a female worker who had been released from service — debited from the account of an official named Inim-Nanna and certified with the seal of Lu-Ninšubur. It is dated by a year in which a high priestess of the storm-god Iškur was chosen by divination, a reminder that even the smallest ration slips were tied to the great religious events of the state calendar.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: four shrine loaves, issued as the food ration for a released female worker. The goods were charged against the account of Inim-Nanna, and the transaction was authorized under the seal of Lu-Ninšubur. Dated to the month of the 'Work of Inanna' festival, in the year when the high priestess of the storm-god Iškur was selected by reading the omens of a sacrificial kid.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 loaves of shrine bread, as the barley ration for the released female worker(s), were withdrawn (expended) from Inim-Nanna. Sealed tablet of Lu-Ninšubur. Month: "Work of Inanna" (kin-Inanna). Year: "The nin-dingir priestess of Iškur was chosen by means of the omen-kid."
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
4(disz) ninda esz3 sze-ba geme2 szu bar-sze3 ki inim-nanna-ta ba-zi kiszib3 lu2-nin-szubur iti kin-inanna mu nin-dingir iszkur masz2-e i3-pa3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Early Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1900 BC)) — JANES 18, 48 22. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: UM 55-21-103 (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P200684). 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.