Position in chronology
BuB 2, 07
About this tablet
This is a short list from the Old Akkadian period, around 2300–2150 BCE. It is now held in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and its original find-spot is unknown. The list gives seven Sumerian personal names and then four titles or trades: a fuller, a governor, a senior official called the "big brother," and a brewer. The tablet has no numbers, no verbs and no amounts, so we can't tell whether it is a roster of real people, a record from some lost transaction, or a scribe's practice list of names and job titles. Two of the names honour gods of the Lagash region, Nanše and Ningirsu. That suggests, but does not prove, that the tablet comes from the Lagash–Girsu area of southern Iraq.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is a plain list. It names seven men: Ur-sipa, Ur-meš, Nanše-bidu, Igi-susu, Lu-tunanam, Ašni-ursag and Ningirsu-lumu. Then come four job titles: a fuller, a governor, a senior official known as the "big brother," and a brewer. The tablet says nothing about why these names and titles were put together.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. Ur-sipa 2. Ur-meš (written Ur-me-ŠE3) 3. Nanše-bidu (Nanše-bi-du11) 4. Igi-susu (Igi-su4-su4) 5. Lu-tunanam (Lu2-tu-na-nam) 6. Ašni-ursag (Aš10-ni-ur-sag) 7. Ningirsu-lumu (Nin-gir2-su-lu2-mu) 8. fuller 9. governor (ensi) 10. šešgal ("big brother"), a temple or administrative rank 11. brewer
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
ur-sipa# ur-me-SZE3# nansze-bi2-du11 igi-su4-su4 lu2-tu-na-nam asz10-ni-ur-sag nin-gir2-su-lu2-mu azlagx(|GESZ.TUG2.KAR.SZE3.DU|) ensi2 szesz-gal lunga3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BuB 2, 07. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P214930) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.