Position in chronology
TCBI 2/1, 17
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic accounting tablet, probably from Zabalam in southern Iraq, roughly 2500 BCE. It lists small quantities — apparently allotments of grain, with a possible entry for goat-kids — set against a series of personal names such as Nin-mu, Gan-li-si, Za-mu, Na-na and Nin-ki, and then closes with a grand total of five gur of barley and a date formula giving a year and the fifth month. Much of the right-hand side of the tablet has broken away, so several entries in the middle of the list are lost. It is an ordinary piece of institutional bookkeeping, the kind of ledger a temple or estate scribe kept to track who had drawn what from the stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A ration list. Against each name the scribe entered an amount: two kids(?) for Nin-mu, five for Gan-li-si, four for Za-mu, fifty-eight for A-[...], then Mi-na-ni, an unreadable figure for Nin-sa, and three further entries now broken away; near the end, two for Na-na and one for Nin-ki. The summary line totals five gur of barley plus one further unit, followed by a figure of thirteen and a date — the year, fifth month. The right side of the tablet is shattered, so part of the account cannot be recovered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 2 kid(?) ..., Nin-mu; 5 — Gan-li-si; 4 — Za-mu; 60 minus 2 (= 58) — A-[...]; Mi-na-ni; [x] — Nin-sa; [...] [...] [...] 2 — Na-na; 1 — Nin-ki. Total: 5 gur of barley, 1 [...]; 13 (gur) — year; month 5.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] 2(disz@t) masz#? x nin-mu 5(disz@t) gan-li9-si4 4(disz@t) za3-mu 1(gesz2) la2 2(disz@t) a2-[x] mi-na-ni [x] nin#-sa6 [...] [...] [...] 2(disz@t) na-na 1(disz@t) nin-ki szu-nigin2# 5(disz@t)# sze gur 1(disz@t) 1(u) 3(asz) mu iti 5(disz@t)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC) ?) — TCBI 2/1, 17. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Banca d'Italia, Rome, Italy (P382022) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.