Position in chronology
JANES 18, 49 27
About this tablet
A small Sumerian livestock receipt from Nippur, written early in the Old Babylonian period under Iddin-Dagan of Isin (early 19th century BCE). Five rams are booked in as the fixed daily offering owed to Enlil and his consort Ninlil, the chief gods of Nippur, and routed to the temple's "meat house" — the slaughtering and butchery department. The tablet was validated by the seal of the šatam-officials, the temple's accounting bureau, and dated precisely to the ninth day of the tenth month of a year named after the king's dedication of a great emblem to the goddess Nin-Isina.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Five rams, entered as part of the standing offering allotment for Enlil and Ninlil at Nippur, delivered to the temple's meat house. The transaction is certified under the seal of the šatam-officials. Dated the ninth of the month Ab-è, in the year King Iddin-Dagan had the great emblem made for the goddess Nin-Isina.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 rams, regular offering(s) (for) Enlil and Ninlil, within Nippur; deliv[ery] for the é-uzu ("meat house"); sealed tablet of the šatam-officials. The 9th day (lit. "day ten minus one"), month: Ab-è (month X), year: Iddin-Dagan the king fashioned the great emblem for Nin-Isina.
Our translation engine — Opus 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
5(disz) udu-nita2 sa2-du11 en-lil2 u3 nin-lil2 sza3 nibru mu-[kux(DU)] e2#-uzu#-sze3# kiszib3 sza3-tam-e-ne u4 1(u) la2 1(disz)-kam# iti ab-e3 mu# i-din-da-gan lugal-e szu-nir-gal nin-isin2-na mu-na-dim2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Early Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1900 BC)) — JANES 18, 49 27. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Iddin-Dagan y1 — Iddin-Dagan became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: OIM A30000 (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P200688). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.