Position in chronology
TMH 05, 119
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic accounting tablet from Nippur, roughly the mid-third millennium BCE, recording issues of flour and fish measured in the big lidga capacity unit. The recipients are a man called Su-bir (probably "the Subarean," a northerner), a group of house-born household servants said to belong to the god Enlil, a boatman, and a man nicknamed "the fox." It closes with a further eighteen-and-a-bit lidga of flour drawn "from the place of allotment." Documents like this are the routine bookkeeping of the great Enlil temple estate at Nippur — proof that the sanctuary fed and staffed a working economy of laborers, boatmen and dependents.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Flour and fish issued: 21 lidga 2 barig of flour to Su-bir the Subarean. Twenty lidga and 1 barig for the household-born servants — they are Enlil's people. Two barig for Lu-ka'a, "the fox man"; 1 lidga 3 barig for the boatman; 3 lidga 2 barig 2 ban of fish, again to Su-bir. And a further 18 lidga 1 barig of flour, drawn from the allotment store.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine21 lidga 2 barig of flour — Su-bir (the Subarean). 20 (lidga) 1 barig — the house-born servants (ama-tu); they are Enlil's. 2 barig — Lu-ka'a ("the fox man"); 1 (lidga) 3 barig — the boatman; 3 lidga 2 barig 2 ban of fish — Su-bir (the Subarean). 20 less 2 (= 18) lidga 1 barig of flour — from the place of allotment.
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) 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) zi3 lid2-ga su-birx(BAPPIR) 2(u@c) 1(barig@c) ama-tu en-lil2-me 2(barig@c) lu2 ka5-a 1(asz@c) 3(barig@c) ma2-lah4 3(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) ku6 lid2-ga su-birx(BAPPIR) 2(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) 1(barig@c) zi3 lid2-ga ki-ba-ta
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 119. 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 (P020533) — 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.