Position in chronology
TMH 05, 141
About this tablet
A small, cushion-shaped clay tablet from Nippur, written around 2500 BCE, recording the contents of an orchard. A scribe counted the trees species by species — three dark mes-trees, three white ones, twenty-eight fig trees — then tallied plants and two sizes of an item called eb, and set out the running totals on the back. It is a piece of ordinary garden bookkeeping, but it is among the oldest horticultural inventories anywhere: proof that Sumerian temple estates already managed their orchards tree by tree, and distinguished varieties by colour and size.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Orchard inventory: 3 dark mes-trees, 3 white mes-trees, and 28 fig trees standing in the garden. Beyond that, 65 plants, 69 of something whose name is now broken away, 29 large eb and 13 small ones. The back of the tablet carries the arithmetic — subtotals of 83, 84 and 43, and a final figure of 5. No names, no dates: just a gardener's or steward's count, filed away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 dark mes-trees, 3 white mes-trees, 30 less 2 (= 28) fig trees — in the orchard. 65 plants (u₂), 70 less 1 (= 69) [......], 30 less 1 (= 29) large eb, 13 small eb. (reverse — totals) 83, 84, 43, 5.
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
3(asz@c) mes ge6 3(asz@c) mes babbar2 3(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) pesz3 kiri6-a 1(gesz2@c) 5(asz@c) u2 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) x [x] 3(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) eb gal-gal 1(u@c) 3(asz@c) eb tur-tur 1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 3(asz@c) 1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 4(asz@c) 4(u@c) 3(asz@c) 5(asz@c)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 141. 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 (P020555) — 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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.