Position in chronology
UET 2, 0055
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic accounting tablet from Ur, now in the British Museum, recording quantities of several commodities or rations distributed to or through an institutional context associated with the moon-god Nanna, the city's patron deity. The entries list measured amounts of what appear to be rations, animal products (a calf), natron, and possibly reeds against named recipients or categories of workers. The tablet is one of the earliest administrative records from Ur and illustrates the temple economy's careful tracking of goods — every basket of grain or newborn animal noted in clay. Its fragmentary and archaic sign-forms mean much of the detail remains uncertain even to specialists.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records several allocations: two large measures of bread or rations assigned to the household of Nanna and to a group of dependent workers; two large measures and one medium measure of something involving horn-material and natron; one large, one weight-unit, and two medium measures for a fresh calf destined for the storehouse; then several further entries involving mixed grain, reeds, and more rations — the last line is too broken to read. The exact commodities and recipient names are partially legible; the rest of the detail is lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 [large units], bread/rations of Nanna, head of the dependent-workers 2 [large units] 1 [medium unit], horn/fill — [commodity] — natron 1 [large unit] 1 [small unit counted by weight] 2 [medium units], calf — fresh/new — storehouse [sign:] mixed-grain? [sign:] X — reed(?) — bread/rations 2 [large units] X, [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N51@f) , GAR NANNA~a SAG UR~a 2(N51@f) 1(N14@f) , SI ME~a NAGA~a 1(N51@f) 1(N34@f@t) 2(N14@f) , AMAR GIBIL E2~a , |HIxSZE3@t| , X GI4~b GAR 2(N51@f) X , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0055. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005628) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
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.