Position in chronology
CUSAS 26, 237
About this tablet
This is a short legal record from Ur, written in Sumerian in the time of the Akkadian (Sargonic) empire, around the 23rd century BCE. It notes that a sum of silver was weighed out as the purchase price of a man named Ur-nukam, who was probably a slave or dependent. It then records that a man called Nanna-anzud held this silver as a claim against another man, Lugal-KA. Documents like this show how the purchase of people and the debts that came out of such sales were written down and could be settled later.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Some shekels of silver (the exact amount is lost) were paid out as the price for Ur-nukam, and it was the en who weighed out the silver. Nanna-anzud held that silver as a claim against Lugal-KA. The last line names Lugal-KA again as the one who acts, but the text as we have it does not say what he did.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] shekels of silver, the purchase price of Ur-nukam, the en weighed out for it. That silver, Nanna-anzud with Lugal-KA had (as a claim) — Lugal-KA …
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
[n] ku3-babbar gin2 nig2-sa10 ur-nu-kam en-ne2 i3-szi-la2 ku3-bi nanna-anzu2#-de3 lugal-KA-da i3-da-tuku-a# lugal#-KA#-e
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — CUSAS 26, 237. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P467745) — 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.