Position in chronology
TMH 05, 150
About this tablet
A small clay receipt from Nippur, written for a temple or palace workshop. It records thirty bronze objects — tools or fittings weighing altogether about 15 minas and 5 shekels (roughly 7.5 kg) — handed back by the weavers and booked to the account of the "House of the Bedchamber," an installation attached to the sanctuary. The tablet is dated by month and by a year-name commemorating the digging of a canal, the ordinary bookkeeping habit of third-millennium Sumerian administrators. It is the kind of inventory check that shows how closely metal was tracked when it was issued to craft workers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Thirty bronze items, total weight 15 minas 5 shekels (about 7.5 kilos), returned by the weaving workshop and charged to the House of the Bedchamber. Recorded in the month of Seed-Sowing, in the year the Amsi-ḪAR canal was dug. In modern terms: a signed-off equipment return, with the metal weighed on receipt so nothing could quietly go missing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine30 bronze (implements) of copper, their weight: 15 mina 5 shekels — (from) the weavers, returned; it belongs to the House of the Bedchamber. Month: Šu-numun ("Seed-sowing"). Year: the Amsi-ḪAR canal was dug.
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
3(u@c) zabar uruda ki-la2-be6 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) ma-na 5(asz@c) gin2 usz-bar szu gi4-a e2 ki-nu2-a-kam iti szu-numun mu i7-am-si-HAR al-dun-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 150. 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 (P020564) — 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.