Position in chronology
MLVS 917
About this tablet
This is a small, cushion-shaped Early Dynastic administrative tablet — a compact accounting note recording textiles. It logs eleven bar-dul5 cloaks associated with weavers, issued or assigned to an overseer named Ur-igi-ama, dated by a month name referencing the opening of the granary's clay seal, with a final note that a man named Šulbi counted or verified three of them. Tablets like this, small enough to fit in a hand, are the everyday bookkeeping of a Mesopotamian textile workshop or storehouse roughly 4,500 years ago — evidence of how closely woven cloth, a major form of wealth, was tracked and cross-checked.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eleven covering-cloaks, made by the weavers, were recorded for Ur-igi-ama, the overseer. This was in the month called 'the granary's clay seal was opened' — one of the local calendar names used at the time. A man named Šulbi checked the count and confirmed three of them for him. The tablet is a short workshop or storehouse memo — the kind of routine paperwork that tracked cloth production and its distribution to officials.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine11 bar-dul5 garments — (of) the weaver(s) — for Ur-igi-ama, the overseer (nu-banda3). Month: 'the granary, the clay (tablet) opened' [iti guru7 im-du8-a]. Šulbi — he counted for him: 3.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(u@c) 1(asz@c) tug2 bar-dul5 usz-bar ur-igi-ama-sze3 nu-banda3 iti guru7 im du8-[a] SZUL-bi2# e-na-szid# 3(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — MLVS 917. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland (P247611) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.