Position in chronology
CUSAS 26, 232
About this tablet
This is a wool account from Ur, written around 2300–2200 BCE when the kings of Akkad ruled Mesopotamia. It records large amounts of wool, more than 20 talents (well over half a tonne) each, credited to two men, Lugal-abzua and Ur-ad₆. A third man, Inim-mani, received 3 talents out of that stock. The wool came from sheep belonging to the goddess Inanna, so the tablet shows temple flocks being plucked and their fleece passing through the hands of named officials.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Lugal-abzua is credited with 25 talents and 23 minas of wool, and Ur-ad₆ with 23 talents less 7 minas. Out of this, Inim-mani received 3 talents of wool. All of it is wool that was plucked from the sheep belonging to the goddess Inanna.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse / Reverse (no side division is marked in the source) 1. 25 talents 23 minas of wool: 2. Lugal-abzua. 3. 23 talents less 7 minas of wool: 4. Ur-ad₆. 5. From it, 3 talents of wool [...] 6. Inim-mani 7. received. 8. (This is) wool of the sheep of Inanna, 9. (which) was plucked.
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(u@c) 5(az@c) siki gu2 2(u) 3(disz@t) ma-na lugal#-abzu#-a 2(u@c) 3(asz@c) siki gu2 la2 7(disz@t) ma-na ur-ad6# sza3-bi 3(asz@c) siki# [gu2] inim-ma-ni# szu ba-ti siki udu inanna-ka-kam ba-ur4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — CUSAS 26, 232. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P467750) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.