Position in chronology
TMH 05, 129
About this tablet
A small, thick administrative tablet from Nippur, written around 2500 BCE in the Early Dynastic period. It records a very large issue of barley — 135 lidga, one of the biggest grain measures in use — handled by the guild of brewers, the men who converted the temple's grain into beer for daily rations. The entry is dated to a month named after the brewers themselves, names the source of the grain, and ends with the name of the official responsible, A-mi-mi. It is a fragment of the accounting machinery that kept a Sumerian city's workforce fed and supplied with beer.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley: 135 lidga. Measured out by the brewers. Month of ku₃-ŠIM ("the brewers' month"). Drawn from Nag-su-dur-gin-nua. This is grain belonging to the city — the account of the work-gang quarter. Filed by A-mi-mi. The reading of the source name and of the phrase identifying the grain is uncertain; those signs are worn on the tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine135 lidga of barley — the brewers measured (it) out. Month: "Silver-of-the-Brewer" (ku₃-ŠIM). From Nag-<su>-dur(?)-gin₇-nu₂-a. It is the barley of the city(?), of the place of the young workmen(?). A-mi-mi (scribe/responsible party).
Our translation engine — Opus 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
2(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) sze lid2-ga lunga-ne an-ne-ag2 iti ku3-SZIM nag!(KA)-<su>-dur?-gin7-nu2-a-ta sze iri gurusz-ne-ki-kam? a-mi-mi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 129. 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 (P020543) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.