Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 476
About this tablet
A small, thick clay tablet from the Early Dynastic period — roughly the middle of the third millennium BCE — recording a bundle of goods assembled under the name Gan-NE. The list moves from bulk staples (barley, emmer) to valuables and finished goods: garlic reckoned as purchase-goods, silver, wool by the mina, beer, fleece, apples, cloaks and bread. One entry counts a person, which in accounts of this kind means a dependent worker or slave included in the reckoning. The mix of foodstuffs, textiles, silver and a human being is typical of a marriage settlement, purchase, or estate transfer rather than a routine ration list.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The account opens with 2 gur 3 barig of barley measured by the standard gur, credited to a woman or household called Gan-NE. Then come the valuables: ten minas of garlic counted as purchase-goods, half a unit of silver handed over, twelve minas of wool, a jar of beer, one person, half a fleece, and fifty apples. A second block under the same name adds three ban of emmer, thirty apples, ten aktum-cloaks, ten loaves of bread and one za₃-piece of silver. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 gur 3 barig of barley, by the sag-gal (standard) gur; Gan-NE. 10 minas of garlic(?) — purchase-goods; 1/2 (mina/shekel) of silver, in hand; 12 minas of wool; 1 (jar of) beer; 1 person; 1/2 suluhu-fleece; 50 apples. Gan-NE. 3 ban of emmer; 30 apples; 10 aktum-garments; 10 loaves of bread; 1 za₃ of silver. (Reverse: uninscribed.)
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
2(asz@c) 3(barig@c) sze gur sag-gal2 gan-NE 1(u@c) SZUM2# ma-na nig2-sa10 1/2(disz@c) ku3 szu 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) siki ma-na 1(asz@c) kasz 1(asz@c) sag 1/2(disz@c) suluhu2 5(u@c) haszhur@v gan-NE 3(ban2@c) ziz2 3(u@c) haszhur@v 1(u@c) aktum 1(u@c) ninda 1(asz@c) za3 ku3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 476. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P250906) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-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.
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.