Position in chronology
TMH 05, 045
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative record from Nippur, written around 2500 BCE. It lists quantities of grain — almost certainly barley — issued as seed to named individuals, grouped under the fields where it was to be sown (the fields 'Gesh-me', 'Gesh-gi-dulla' and 'Du-lul'). It is a small window onto how a temple or civic estate organized the planting season, tracking who received seed for which plot. The tablet is cracked and partly broken, so several names and amounts are lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a seed-grain issue sheet. Munus-pirig-tur is named first; then comes the block for the Gesh-me field: Bad got 120, E-gam-gam 20, someone whose name is lost 45, Lugal-[...] 10, and Lugal-ana-tum 40. Next is the block for the Gesh-gi-dulla field, where an entry for one man survives but the rest is broken away. Then the block for the Du-lul field, whose entries are lost. The closing line says the grain was for seed and was received.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineMunus-pirig-tur. It is (the allotment for) the field Gesh-me. 120 (units) — Bad; 20 — E-gam-gam; 45 — [...]; 10 — Lugal-[...]; 40 — Lugal-ana-tum. It is (the allotment for) the field Gesh-gi-dul-[la]. [x] — a man(?) [...]; [...] It is (the allotment for) the field Du-lul. [...] [...] for seed he received.
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
munus-pirig-tur GAN2 gesz-me-kam 2(gesz2@c) badx(EZEN) 2(u@c) e2-gam-gam 4(u@c) 5(asz@c) [...] 1(u@c) lu:gal-[...] 4(u@c) lugal-an-na-tum2 GAN2 gesz-gi-dul4#-[la]-kam [x] lu2? [...] GAN2 du6-lul-kam [...] [...] numun-sze3 szu ba-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 045. 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 (P020459) — 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.