Position in chronology
TMH 05, 094
About this tablet
A small livestock account from Nippur in the Early Dynastic period, roughly 2500 BCE — among the older layers of everyday bookkeeping from that city. A scribe tallies sheep, kids, and lambs moving through named individuals: some animals booked out from a man called Lugal-kiag, others from Dingir-igidu, with two lambs earmarked as offerings 'for the gods.' The final line dates the record to the month Gangane, showing that the Nippur calendar of month-names was already in administrative use.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt for small livestock. Four sheep that were returned are credited to Kar-ni; two head to Lugal-annatum; two to a man from Uruk — all these drawn from the account of Lugal-kiag. Then one sheep (perhaps from a person or place written 'Im'), one young goat noted as a carcass or loss, and two lambs set aside as offerings for the gods, these last items coming from Dingir-igidu. The whole transaction was filed in the month of Gangane — the ancient equivalent of stamping a date on the paperwork.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 returned sheep — Kar-ni; 2 — Lugal-annatum; 2 — the man of Uruk; from Lugal-kiag; 1 sheep from Im(-ta)(?); 1 kid — month: 'carcass' (a dead animal?); 2 lambs for the gods, from Dingir-igidu. Month: Gangane.
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
4(asz@c) udu gur-ra kar-ni 2(asz@c) lugal-an-na-tum2 2(asz@c) lu2 unu ki lugal-ki-ag2-ta 1(asz@c) udu im-ta 1(asz@c) masz2 iti ad6 2(asz@c) sila4 dingir-ne-sze3 ki dingir-igi-du-ta iti gan-gan-e3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 094. 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 (P020508) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.