Position in chronology
Nik 1, 227
About this tablet
This small clay tablet is an Early Dynastic administrative account from Girsu (modern Tello) in southern Iraq, dating to roughly 2500-2350 BCE. It records a delivery of animal hides — four sheep, two goat, and seven lamb skins — moving through an official named Ur-igi, an overseer, tied to an institution called the 'house of Namdumu.' Tablets like this were the bookkeeping backbone of Sumerian temple and palace economies, tracking raw materials such as leather that would later be worked into sandals, containers, or harnesses.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a stock ledger entry: four sheep hides, two goat hides, and seven lamb hides were logged out of a storehouse and recorded as accounted for. The transaction was overseen by an official named Ur-igi, working out of an institution called the house of Namdumu. It happened in the month called 'the man of Uruk,' on the third occurrence of some recurring event, and a man named Šul-bi delivered or handed over the goods once the matter had been settled. A final tally of six is noted at the bottom, though it doesn't match the sum of the hides listed above, so it may refer to something else being counted separately, such as a transaction count.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 sheep hides, 2 goat hides, 7 lamb hides, hides — from the storehouse (e-ta), returned/accounted for (šu-a gi4-a). Ur-igi, the overseer (nu-banda3), from the house of Namdumu (e2 nam-dumu-ta). Month: 'lu2 unu-ga' ("the man of Unug"), the 3rd (day/instance), having gone (gen-na-a), Šul-bi2 gave (it) to him. 6 (total, in the special ASZxDISZ notation).
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
4(asz@c) kusz udu 2(asz@c) kusz masz 7(asz@c) kusz sila4 kusz e-ta szu-a gi4-a ur-igi nu-banda3 e2 nam-dumu-ta iti lu2 unu-ga 3(disz@t)-kam-ma gen-na-a SZUL-bi2 [e]-na-szum2 6(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — Nik 1, 227. 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 (P221996) — 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.