MVN 05, 043

~2042 BCE·Ur III · Neo-Sumerian·P114263

About this tablet

A small livestock receipt from Umma in southern Iraq, written under the Third Dynasty of Ur (about 2040 BCE). It records a single dead or slaughtered nanny-goat entering the books as an incoming delivery, handed over from a man named Ur-Utu and certified with the seal of the scribe Lu-kalla, son of Ur-E'e the chief herdsman. Dated to the month of harvest in the year after En-unugal was installed as high priest of Inanna, it is one of tens of thousands of such notes produced by the Ur III bureaucracy, which tracked even the carcass of one goat.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Received: one nanny-goat, dead. Booked as an incoming delivery under Gula, transferred from Ur-Utu, and certified by the seal of Lu-kalla. Dated to the harvest month in the year following the installation of En-unugal as priest of Inanna. The seal on the tablet reads: Lu-kalla, scribe, son of Ur-E'e, chief herdsman — the last lines partly restored from the standard form of his seal.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

1 nanny-goat, dead (slaughtered); delivery; Gu-la; from Ur-Utu; under seal of Lu-kalla. Month: "Harvest" (šeš-sag-kud). Year after: "En-unugal was installed (as en-priest) of Inanna." (Seal inscription:) [Lu-kalla], [the scribe], son of Ur-[E'e, the chief herdsman].

Indicative reading — translated without a photograph. Generated from the transliteration alone, without examining the original. Read it as an accessible first taste, not as a verified catalogue entry.

Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

1(disz) ud5 ba-usz2
mu-kux(DU)
gu-la
ki ur-utu-ta
kiszib3# lu2-kal-la
iti sze-sag11-ku5
mu us2-sa en-unu6-gal inanna ba-hun
[lu2-kal-la]
[dub-sar]
dumu ur-[e11-e szusz3]

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — MVN 05, 043. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y5 — Year after: En-unugal of Inanna installed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.

Attribution

Image: Anonymous 114263 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P114263). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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AoF 30, 238,1