Position in chronology
OSP 1, 022
About this tablet
A silver account from Early Dynastic Nippur, the great religious center of Sumer, written well over four thousand years ago. It records the city governor weighing out a substantial sum — 5 minas of silver — to the son of a man named Ur-Enlil, with a further 13 shekels drawn from the account of one Ur-Egal, the transfer handled through named intermediaries including a minister. Tablets like this are the raw paperwork of one of the world's earliest silver-based economies, showing that precious metal was already being weighed, tracked, and transferred between officials centuries before coinage existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a payment record. When the governor weighed out 5 minas of silver (roughly two and a half kilograms) to Ur-Enlil's son, a further 13 shekels of silver were taken from Ur-Egal's account as the balance of the transaction. Two signs in the middle are too damaged to read. The handover went through a man whose name is partly broken (U-AN-...), the brothers, and the minister, and the silver was duly given over. Filed in the sixth month.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) When the governor (ensi) had weighed out 5 minas of silver to the son of Ur-Enlil, 13 shekels of silver from Ur-Egal — its total(?) — ... (two signs illegible) ... U-AN-[x] (and) the brothers, the minister (sukkal): it was given to him. (reverse) Month: 6th.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
u4 ensi2-ke4 dumu ur-en-lil2-le 5(asz@c) ku3 ma-na i3-na-la2-a 1(u@c) 3(asz@c) ku3 gin2 ki ur-e2-gal-ta gu2-be6 x x x U-AN-[x] szesz-szesz sukkal an-na-szum2 iti 6(disz@t)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — OSP 1, 022. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P221581) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.