Position in chronology
TMH 05, 152
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic account from Nippur, in southern Iraq, recording large weights of copper issued as (or worked into) long poles — most likely lance or spear shafts fitted with metal. Three men are named: Ur-Ningirim, Lugal-duganni, and a third whose name breaks off. The totals are substantial — 28 talents is roughly 840 kilograms — which suggests a temple or palace workshop handling metal on an industrial scale, not a household transaction. Tablets like this are among our earliest documentation of organized metal supply in Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Copper issued for long-poles: seven talents charged to Ur-Ningirim, twenty-eight talents to Lugal-duganni, and one talent to E-manu-, whose name is broken off at the edge. Nothing else survives — the back of the tablet is blank or worn smooth. It is a short ledger, three entries and three names, of the kind a workshop clerk would draw up when metal left the storehouse.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine7 (lit. 10 minus 3) talents of copper — long-poles (lances), belonging to Ur-Ningirim. 28 talents of copper — long-poles (lances), (for) Lugal-duganni. 1 talent — long-poles (lances), (for) E-manu-[...]. (Reverse: uninscribed / surface effaced.)
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
1(u@c)#? la2 3(asz@c) gu2 uruda gesz gid2-da ur-nin-girimx(|A.HA.BU.DU|)#?-kam 2(u@c) 8(asz@c) gu2 uruda gesz gid2-da lugal-du11-ga-ni 1(asz@c) gu2 gesz gid2-da e2?-ma-nu-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 152. 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 (P020566) — 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.