Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/1, pl. 059, 1924-0555
About this tablet
A small administrative receipt from Puzriš-Dagan (modern Drehem, near Nippur), dated to the Ur III period, around 2040–2000 BCE. This was the great royal livestock depot of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and tablets like this one tracked the movement of animals — in this case two lambs — between named officials on a specific day. The year-name 'The throne of Enlil was fashioned' pins the document to a particular regnal year and reflects the Ur III practice of naming years after memorable royal acts or dedications. Though tiny and routine, such receipts are the backbone of our knowledge of Ur III state economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Translation · reference
Medium confidence2 lambs, day 28, from Abba-saqa Inta'e received. Month: intercalary Ezem-mekigal, year: 'The throne of Enlil was fashioned.' 2
Source: engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-12/v4-interpretation)
Translation · AI engine
read from photo2 lambs, day 28, from Abba-saqa Inta'e received. Month: intercalary Ezem-mekigal, year: 'The throne of Enlil was fashioned.' 2
5 uncertain terms ↓
- in-ta-e3-<a> i3-dab5 — The verb 'in-ta-e3' (literally 'he/she brought out from') with elided -a is restored by the editor; 'i3-dab5' means 'received/took charge of'. Together: 'Inta'e received [them] from Abba-saqa.' The personal name Inta'e (Akkadian Inta''e) is well attested at Drehem.
- iti diri ezem-me-ki-gal2 — An intercalary (diri = extra/leap) month appended to the festival month Ezem-mekigal. The '#' marks in the transliteration signal the editor's partial uncertainty about these sign readings; cannot fully verify from photo.
- mu gu-za en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2 — Year name: 'The year the throne of Enlil was fashioned.' This year name is attested for Amar-Suen year 3 or a related Ur III king; exact royal attribution depends on full archival context not present in this fragment alone.
- 2(disz) [trailing] — The final isolated '2' may be a check-sum, a running total, or a tablet-section marker. Its function is not entirely clear without the broader archival context.
- ab-ba-sa6-ga — Personal name, literally 'Abba-saqa' (Sumerian: 'the father is good/fine'). A known Drehem official name; the -ta suffix marks the ablative 'from Abba-saqa'.
Reasoning ↓
Photo examination: the tablet is shown in five views (obverse, reverse, and three edges), all with the museum number '1924.555' inked on the top edge. The clay surface is buff/tan and generally intact with some surface crazing and minor cracks. On the obverse (upper centre panel), I can make out clusters of wedge impressions consistent with the small number signs and the word-signs expected in lines 1–3; the wedges are shallow but legible under raking light. The reverse (lower centre panel) shows further cuneiform signs, consistent with the date formula lines 4–6. I cannot independently resolve every individual sign at this resolution — particularly the month name and year formula signs are too small to confirm sign by sign — so cross-check is partial. The transliteration is consistent with a standard Ur III Drehem animal-receipt formula, and the year name 'mu gu-za den-lil2-la2 ba-dim2' is attested elsewhere in the Ur III corpus (a year of Amar-Suen or Šu-Suen, depending on collation). The trailing '2(disz)' at the end is possibly a subtotal or check-number, as is common in such tablets. The '<a>' restoration in 'in-ta-e3-<a>' is a standard scribal elision in Drehem texts. No major discrepancies between photo and transliteration detected, though the intercalary month sign 'diri' and the '#' markers on 'ezem#' and 'us2#' indicate the editor's uncertainty about those signs, which I likewise cannot fully verify from the photo.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 12, 2026 · 2754 in / 1104 out tokens
Why it matters
Transliteration
2(disz) sila4 u4 2(u) 8(disz)-kam ki ab-ba-sa6-ga-ta in-ta-e3-<a> i3-dab5 iti diri ezem#-me-ki-gal2 us2#-sa mu gu-za en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2 2(disz)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/1, pl. 059, 1924-0555. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ur-Nammu y14 — The throne of Enlil was fashioned based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P142813) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-12/v4-interpretation).
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.