Position in chronology
CDLI Lexical 000002, ex. 191
About this tablet
This is a fragment of one of the earliest known written documents in human history — a proto-cuneiform lexical list of titles and offices from the city of Ur, dating to the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2900–2400 BCE). It belongs to a well-known series of school-like lists that catalogued institutional titles — the ranks of priests, viziers, and officials that a literate administrator was expected to know. These small, lentil-shaped clay objects (the 'lenticular' format visible in the photograph) are characteristic of the Ur corpus of early administrative and lexical writing. The tablet is too fragmentary to reconstruct fully, but the surviving entries preserve a recognisable sequence of priestly and courtly ranks, making it a precious window into the bureaucratic and religious hierarchy of the earliest Sumerian city-states.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this ancient list reads roughly as follows: after a damaged opening line with an uncertain numerical sign, the text records a series of official titles in sequence — 'EN' (a high lord or priest-king), 'IB' (an official of unknown rank), then a linen-cloth holder paired with the title of Vizier, a 'Great One' associated with a dairy or cream product, a garment-holder, a 'Great One of the throne-base,' a 'Great One' of an office whose name we cannot yet read, and two SANGA-priests attached to similarly unread institutional names. The last legible entries may record a sign-group of uncertain meaning and possibly the title 'spouse' — perhaps the wife of a high official. Several lines are broken away entirely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] |1(N58).BAD~a| EN, IB [...] Linen-cloth(?) SUKKAL (vizier) Great one, GARA2 Garment, GARA2 [...] Great one of the throne-base Great one of |ZATU737xDI| SANGA-priest of |ZATU737xX| SANGA-priest of |ZATU737xX| [ZATU725(?)] [DAM(?)] (spouse/wife?)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo8 uncertain terms ↓
- GARA2~a — Conventionally interpreted as a dairy product (cream, ghee, or curd); exact referent disputed. Some readings prefer 'ghee', others 'cream-cheese'.
- |ZATU737xDI| — A composite sign not yet assigned a standard reading; its meaning in this administrative context is unclear.
- |ZATU737xX| — The internal sign is illegible or unidentified in the transliteration; cannot verify from photo.
- ZATU725#? — Queried reading; sign may be damaged or ambiguous. ZATU725 is an archaic sign of uncertain value.
- DAM#? — Queried; could mean 'spouse/wife' or be part of a compound title. Context within a titles list makes 'spouse (of an official)' plausible but not certain.
- SUKKAL — Rendered 'vizier' by convention; literally a high administrative official, sometimes translated 'minister' or 'envoy' in later periods.
- SANGA~a — Rendered 'temple administrator'; the archaic sign form (~a variant) marks this as Early Dynastic script stage.
- 1(N58).BAD~a — Numerical/sign combination at the start of a damaged line; N58 is a numerical notation sign. Context too broken to interpret meaningfully.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows seven small, roughly ovoid clay objects, dark in colour (fired or heavily patinated). Two in the lower portion of the image bear the ink accession mark 'USB40' (likely a field or museum lot number), and one at the top appears to bear '37-7-5' or similar, consistent with the University of Pennsylvania museum catalogue number UM 37-07-005. The two lower objects show the clearest cuneiform impressions: multiple columns of densely packed wedge clusters are visible, consistent with a lexical list format. The central middle object also shows clear wedge groups. The upper-left and upper-right objects appear blank or too eroded on their visible faces to read signs. Individual sign identification from the photo is difficult at this resolution and in this lighting — the wedge impressions are real and present, but I cannot reliably discriminate one sign from another to cross-check the transliteration sign by sign. The transliteration belongs to the Early Dynastic lexical corpus, specifically the ED Lu₂ A list or a closely related titles-and-professions list; the sequence linen–vizier / great-one–dairy-product / garment–dairy-product is well-attested in parallel exemplars from Ur and Fara. The damaged and queried readings (SANGA~a, ZATU725, DAM) cannot be verified from the photo.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 12, 2026 · 3492 in / 1013 out tokens
Transliteration
[...] |1(N58).BAD~a|# EN~a# IB~a [...] GADA~a SUKKAL GAL~a GARA2~a TUG2~a GARA2~a [...] GAL~a GISZGAL GAL~a |ZATU737xDI| SANGA~a |ZATU737xX| SANGA~a# |ZATU737xX|# ZATU725#? DAM#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — CDLI Lexical 000002, ex. 191. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P000723) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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.
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.