Position in chronology
TMH 05, 103
About this tablet
A small oval clay receipt from Nippur, written in the Early Dynastic period, recording textiles handed out to two named men. Ur-Idda gets a modest pair of garments; Lugal-igi-il receives forty — twenty thin bar-cloths and twenty aktum-garments — which suggests he was collecting a bulk consignment rather than a personal issue. The goods came out of the stores of the estate overseer, and the scribe dated the transaction to Ne-ne-gar, the fifth month of the Nippur calendar, when fires were lit for the dead. Cloth was one of the great wealth-goods of early Mesopotamia, and tablets like this are the paperwork behind that industry.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Textile issue: two ḫala'um garments and two aktum garments to Ur-Idda; twenty thin bar-cloths and twenty aktum garments to Lugal-igi-il. The goods were released from the estate overseer's stores and handed over to him. Recorded in the month of Ne-ne-gar.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 ḫala'um-garments, 2 aktum-garments — Ur-Idda; 20 bar-sal garments (thin bar-cloths), 20 aktum-garments — Lugal-igi-il. From the overseer of the household it was given to him. Month: Ne-ne-gar (fifth month).
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(asz@c) tug2 ha-la-um 2(asz@c) tug2 aktum ur-i7-da 2(u@c) tug2 bar!(ASZ) sal4 2(u@c) tug2 aktum lugal-igi-il2 ki ugula-e2-ta an-na-szum2 iti ne-ne-gar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 103. 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 (P020517) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.