Position in chronology
TMH 05, 026
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Nippur, written in the Early Dynastic period (mid-third millennium BCE), tallying workers or personnel assigned to named individuals. Named overseers such as Ur-saga and a donkey-herdsman each account for a group of men, and the scribe closes with a grand total of 73 men 'counted'. It is a glimpse of how an early Sumerian city kept track of its labor force, centuries before the famous Ur III bureaucracy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a headcount. After a broken opening referring to the end of the year, the list gives 7 men under Lu-geškam, 14 under Ur-saga, an unreadable number under Il-susu, and 5 under the donkey-herdsman. The bottom line: 73 men in all, belonging to the city (or to the 'AN' institution), duly counted. A further entry names a certain Zur-zur, and the last line, mostly lost, ends with the sign AN. The reverse of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) [...] the year's end (za₃-mu); 7: Lu-geškam; 14: Ur-saga; [x]: Il-susu; 5: the donkey-herdsman. Total: 73 men of the city (iri)-AN, counted. [x]: Zur-zur; [...] AN.
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
[...] za3-mu 7(asz@c) lu2-gesz-kam 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) ur-sa6-ga [x] il-[su]-su 5(asz@c) sipa ansze szu-nigin2 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 3(asz@c) lu2 iri-AN al-szid [x] zur#-zur [...] AN
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 026. 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 (P020440) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.