Position in chronology
CUSAS 26, 249
About this tablet
A small record of wool from Ur, written in the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, around the 23rd century BCE. It lists 4 minas of wool together with several named people. One of them is identified as the man of someone called Atume, and a woman with an Akkadian name, Binitum, also appears. This is the ordinary paperwork of a big household handing out or taking in textile fibre. Because the tablet is broken in the middle and at the end, we cannot tell whether these people received the wool or delivered it.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Four minas of wool, about two kilograms, are recorded against a list of people: Agugi; Nig-KA-zu (the reading is not certain), who works for Atume; two more people whose names are lost; Adabar (partly restored); and Binitum. Next comes an entry of 1, probably a further mina of wool, for someone whose name ends in '-mum' and is otherwise damaged. The last line is too damaged to understand. It may mention a place or a field.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 4 minas of wool: 2. Agugi; 3. Nig-KA-zu(?), 4. man of Atume; 5. [......] 6. [......] 7. [A?]dabar; 8. Binitum; 9. 1: x-(x)-mum; 10. KI(?) x GAN2(?) ......
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. 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
4(disz) siki ma-na a-gu-gi nig2#?-KA#?-zu lu2# a-tu-me [...] [...] [a2?]-da#-bar bi2-ni-tum 1(disz) x-(x)-mu#-um ki? x GAN2?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — CUSAS 26, 249. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P467775) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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.
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.