Position in chronology
TMH 05, 002
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Nippur, roughly 2500 BCE. It is a personnel roster: a scribe tallies workers one by one, naming some individually and counting others only by occupation, above all 'donkey-herders' (sipa anše), alongside a potter and a shepherd. Texts like this show how early temple or estate administrators kept track of their labor force, with donkey-herding a surprisingly prominent job category in this small list.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a head-count of people. Two men called Tugdu, one potter, two named Anene, one Šu-saḫar, and one Lani, a shepherd. Then five donkey-herders; Šeš-pada; two more donkey-herders; Enlil-saga; an unknown number of donkey-herders (the figure is lost); a line that probably reads UD-UD; two more donkey-herders; a man called Il; and Lu-tir. No totals or date survive.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 2 Tugdu (?) 1 Bahar (potter) 2 Anene 1 Šu-saḫar (?) 1 Lani, shepherd 5 donkey-herders 1 Šeš-pada 2 donkey-herders 1 Enlil-saga [n] donkey-herders UD-UD (?) 2 donkey-herders 1 Il 1 Lu-tir
Our translation engine — Fable 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
2(asz@c) tug2#?-du8 1(asz@c) bahar2 2(asz@c) a-ne-ne 1(asz@c) szu-sahar? 1(asz@c) la-ni sipa 5(asz@c) sipa ansze 1(asz@c) szesz-pa3-da 2(asz@c) sipa ansze 1(asz@c) en-lil2-sa6-ga [n] sipa ansze UD?-UD 2(asz@c) sipa ansze 1(asz@c) il2 1(asz@c) lu2-tir
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 002. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany (P020416) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.