Position in chronology
TMH 05, 081
About this tablet
An administrative memorandum about cattle from Early Dynastic Nippur, roughly 2400 BCE. It records 42 oxen in the charge of a man named Ur-rani, notes that he failed to deliver them, and that the temple administrator transferred the relevant record. Its real fame lies in the date formula: the year is named after En-šakušana, king of Uruk, smiting the city of Agade — one of the very earliest mentions of Akkad, decades before Sargon made it the capital of the world's first empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a cattle account: 42 oxen assigned to a man named Ur-rani. A tablet documenting them was transferred along with him, and an inspection was carried out. The record is dated to the month of Duku, in the year when En-šakušana defeated the city of Agade. But there was a problem — at the courtyard (the delivery point), Ur-rani never brought the oxen in. So the temple administrator transferred the paperwork, presumably to keep the debt on the books. In short: forty-two oxen owed, not delivered, and the accountants made sure it was recorded.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine42 oxen — Ur-rani. With him(?) ... The tablet that was transferred with him; inspection thereof(?). Month: Duku (the "Holy Mound"). Year: En-ša[kušana] smote Agade. In the courtyard(?) of ...-kun, Ur-rani did not deliver (them). The temple administrator (sanga) transferred its tablet.
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
4(u@c) 2(asz@c) gu4 ur-ra-ni an-da-sze dub an-da-bala-a an-ta-gurum2 iti du6-ku3 mu en-sza3#-[kusz2-an-na] ag-ga#?-de3 |GIN2.SZE3|! bi2-se3-ga kisal#?-x-kun ur-ra-ni nu-DU sanga dub-bi i3-bala
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 081. 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 (P020495) — 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.