Position in chronology
Erm 14334
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Girsu in southern Iraq, roughly 2500–2350 BCE — a receipt recording a large barley transaction. A merchant named Utu-anzu is involved in the transfer of 57 gur of barley, apparently as the price in a purchase, with a man called SZUL-bi handing over the grain. It is a snapshot of early commerce: professional merchants moving bulk grain as payment centuries before coined money existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Fifty-seven gur of barley (sixty minus three, a sizeable bulk shipment) are booked here in connection with Utu-anzu, the merchant. A partly damaged line seems to mention a courier or another party and a figure of six. The barley served as the purchase price for something whose name is lost, and a man named SZUL-bi handed it over to the recipient. The final numeral six may be a tally or a year notation. The reverse of the tablet was left uninscribed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 1. 60 less 3 (= 57) gur of barley — 2. Utu-anzu(?), 3. the merchant. 4. ... the courier(?) ... 6(?) ... 5. (as) the purchase price (of) ...; 6. that barley SZUL-bi 7. gave to him. 8. 6 (units/year 6?).
Our translation engine — Fable 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(gesz2) la2 3(disz@t) gur# sze utu?-anzu2 dam-gar3 KAS4? AZ? 6(asz@c)? NA nig2!?-sa10 (x) sze-bi SZUL-bi2 e-na-szum2 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Erm 14334. 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 (P225742) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.
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.