Position in chronology
TMH 05, 113
About this tablet
A small bun-shaped clay tablet from Nippur, written in the Early Dynastic period (mid-third millennium BCE), recording a distribution of wool to six named men. Ur-Enlil and a man called Eb each get 20 minas (roughly 10 kg apiece), while four others receive 10 minas each — 80 minas of wool in all. The closing word, nig₂-ba, marks the whole transaction as a 'gift' or presentation rather than a wage or a sale, the kind of disbursement a temple or palace household made to its dependents and favoured personnel. Two of the recipients carry names built on Enlil, the chief god of Nippur, and one on the city name Nibru (Nippur) itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Wool issued as a presentation: Ur-Enlil, 20 minas; Eb, 20; Na-mu-dib, 10; Nibru-da-lu, 10; Lugal-ša, 10; Igi-Enlil-še, 10. All six men acknowledged receipt of the wool as a gift. That comes to eighty minas altogether — something on the order of forty kilograms of raw wool handed out from the institution's stores.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine20 minas of wool — Ur-Enlil; 20 — Eb; 10 — Na-mu-dib; 10 — Nibru-da-lu; 10 — Lugal-ša; 10 — Igi-Enlil-še; (as) a gift they received.
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(u@c) siki ma-na ur-en-lil2 2(u@c) eb 1(u@c) na-mu-dib 1(u@c) nibru-da-lu2 1(u@c) lugal-sza3 1(u@c) igi-en-lil2-sze3 nig2-ba szu ba-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 113. 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 (P020527) — 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.