Position in chronology
MLVS 918
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is an Early Dynastic wool-disbursement account, the everyday bookkeeping of a Sumerian administration roughly 4,500 years ago. It records small quantities of wool — measured in mana and shekels — issued to named individuals, including a leatherworker named Ur-Ninpirig and officials called Ur-igi and Šullu, under the supervision of an overseer and a captain. The closing lines date the transaction to a month named for a festival of the goddess Nanše and note that the wool was stored or deposited in a particular storeroom, tying this humble receipt to the temple economy of a Sumerian city.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short wool-ration voucher. A third of a mana of za-ku wool went to Ur-Ninpirig the leatherworker. Ten shekels went to Ur-igi, who held the office of overseer. Ten more shekels went to a man named Šullu, and fifteen shekels to someone called Shul-bi. Ur-igi appears again, this time named as captain (nu-banda). The transaction was handled at the house of the surveyor. It happened during the month called 'the festival of malt-eating,' a month sacred to the goddess Nanše, and the wool was stored away in the storeroom — the final verb confirming the deposit is restored from a broken part of the tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1/3 mana of za-KU wool — (for) Ur-Ninpirig, the leatherworker. 10 shekels — Ur-igi, the overseer. 10 shekels — Šullu. 15 shekels — ŠUL-bi2. Ur-igi, the captain (nu-banda3). (At) the house of the man of the surveying-rope (surveyor). Month: 'Festival of malt-eating' of Nanše, in the gu2-ne-ne-a (storeroom), [it was placed/deposited].
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
1/3(asz@c) siki za-KU ma-na ur-nin-pirig aszgab 1(u@c) gin2 ur-igi ugula 1(u@c) gin2 szul-lu2 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) gin2 SZUL-bi2 ur-igi nu-banda3 e2 lu2 esz2-gid2-ka-ka iti ezem munu4 gu7 nansze-ka gu2-ne-ne-a [e-ne-gar]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — MLVS 918. 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 (P247612) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.