Position in chronology
TMH 05, 086
About this tablet
A small administrative receipt from Nippur recording livestock — oxen and ten sheep — supplied by two named officials as a food offering of Sargon of Akkad, which was then consumed, presumably in a cultic meal. It is dated by month and by the year-name commemorating Sargon's destruction of the Elamite city of Urua. Tablets like this are precious because they name Sargon (written Sarum-gi) in a contemporary everyday document, anchoring the legendary empire-builder in real accounting practice.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a disbursement record: a number of oxen (the figure is broken away) came in from Sag-Enlilda, and ten sheep from A'ulgal. Together they constituted Sargon's food offering, and the animals were duly consumed. The clerk dated the note to the emmer month, in the year Urua was destroyed — one of Sargon's military campaigns used as a calendar label. In modern terms: 'Received from two suppliers, oxen and 10 sheep, for the king's offering; used. Filed, month 11-ish, year of the Urua campaign.'
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] oxen from Sag-Enlilda, 10 sheep from A'ulgal — it being the food offering of Sargon — were consumed. Month: "Emmer" (ziz₂-a). Year: Urua was destroyed.
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
[n] gu4 ki sag-en-lil2-da-ta 1(u@c) udu ki a-ul4-gal-ta nidba sar-um#-gi-kam ab-gu7 iti ziz2-a mu uru18!(|URUxMIN|) hul-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 086. 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 (P020500) — 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.