Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 419
About this tablet
A small silver account from the Early Dynastic period, probably written at Umma in southern Iraq around the middle of the third millennium BCE. It records shekel amounts of silver — some of it specified as 'refined,' most of it as purchase money — handed over to or on behalf of half a dozen named men: Lugal-ezem, Dingir-lu-maḫ, Ur-pu-sag, Di-Utu, Ur-sag-Utu, Abba-tur. Alongside the silver a ram and two kids are entered, the sort of mixed accounting typical of an estate or temple household where metal and livestock moved through the same ledger. The tablet is a bun-shaped lump of clay, now cracked into several pieces, with the reverse left almost entirely blank.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Half a shekel of refined silver goes to Ba-NI. One ram for Lugal-ezem, one shekel for Lu-[...]. Then a run of purchase payments, two units of silver apiece: one unallocated, then one each for Dingir-lu-maḫ, for Ur-pu-sag, and one shared by Di-Utu and Lugal-ezem. A third of a shekel of purchase silver goes to Ur-sag-Utu; the next line records some shekels of silver for a name now lost, followed by two signs too damaged to read. The account closes with 4 1/3 shekels of silver for Abba-tur and two kids.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1/2 shekel of refined silver — Ba-NI. 1 ram: Lugal-ezem. 1 shekel: Lu-x-[...]. 2 (units of) silver, the purchase price, in shekels. 2 (units of) silver, the purchase price, in shekels: Dingir-lu-maḫ. 2 (units of) silver, the purchase price, in shekels: Ur-pu-sag. 2 (units of) silver, the purchase price, in shekels: Di-Utu, Lugal-ezem. 1/3 shekel of silver, the purchase price: Ur-sag-Utu. [n] shekel(s) of silver: [...] (two illegible signs) 4 1/3 shekels of silver: Abba-tur. 2 kids.
Our translation engine — Opus 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
1/2(asz@c) ku3-luh gin2 ba-NI 1(asz@c) udu-nita lugal-ezem 1(asz@c) gin2 lu2-x-[...] 2(asz@c@90) ku3 sa10# gin2 2(asz@c@90) ku3 sa10# gin2 dingir-lu2-mah2#! 2(asz@c@90)# ku3 sa10# gin2# ur-pu2(|LAGABxTIL|)-sag 2(asz@c@90) ku3 sa10# gin2# di-utu lugal-ezem 1/3(asz@c) ku3 sa10# gin2 ur-sag-utu [n] ku3 gin2 [...] x x? 4(asz@c) 1/3(asz@c) ku3 gin2 ab-ba-tur 2(asz@c) masz2#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC) ?) — CUSAS 35, 419. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252830) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.