Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 02
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from the ancient city of Ur, recording the disbursement or receipt of livestock — she-goats and male goats, and possibly some fleece or wool product — against the names of several individuals. The personal names (En-kul-aba-si, Nanna-mud, Igi-gi-gi) suggest it is a personnel or ration record tracking which named persons are responsible for, or are recipients of, specific animals. The tablet is tiny (roughly 4–5 cm across), lenticular in shape, and bears the British Museum field number U.30718 from the Ur excavations. Such tablets are rare witnesses to the most archaic bookkeeping practices of Mesopotamian city-state administration.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Each entry follows the same pattern: one animal (or wool product?) assigned to a named person. One 'asz2-gar3' (a shearing product or fleece allocation) goes to someone whose name begins with x-me-en; one she-goat to Zur-zur (with two further signs too damaged to read); one goat to En-kul-aba-si; one fleece/product to Nanna-mud; one fleece/product to Igi-gi-gi; and two goats to a person or account whose name is now broken away. The rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[1] fleece/shearing-product(?) x-me-en [1] she-goat zur-zur x x [x] 1 goat En-kul-aba-si 1 fleece/shearing-product(?) Nanna-mud 1 fleece/shearing-product(?) Igi-gi-gi 2 goats [...]
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 photo9 uncertain terms ↓
- asz2-gar3 — Conventionally read as 'ram' (adult male sheep) in Early Dynastic Ur texts; the precise proto-cuneiform sign sequence and species determination remain debated.
- ud5 — Read as 'she-goat' or 'nanny-goat'; occasionally distinguished from masz2 (billy-goat/kid) but age and sex categories are not always unambiguous from the sign alone.
- masz2 — Proto-cuneiform sign for goat or kid; adult vs. juvenile, male vs. female not always determinable from the sign alone.
- zur-zur — A personal name or epithet; the reduplication suggests it may be a nickname or occupational title, but its meaning is not established.
- x-me-en — Partially broken name or phrase; the initial sign is unread. 'me-en' could be a suffix or part of a compound name.
- en-kul-aba4-si — A personal name meaning approximately 'Lord, may Kulaba be satisfied/completed'; Kulaba is a district of Uruk, making this a theophoric or toponym-based name — unusual but attested.
- nanna-mud — Personal name invoking Nanna (moon god of Ur); mud may mean 'born of' or 'offspring of', giving 'offspring of Nanna'.
- igi-gi-gi — Personal name with reduplication; possibly related to igi ('eye') or gi ('reed/to return'); exact meaning uncertain.
- N01@f — The '@f' diacritic in the transliteration indicates a specific formal or rotated variant of the basic unit numeral; functionally equivalent to a count of '1' for translation purposes.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a small, rounded clay tablet photographed from multiple angles, carrying the British Museum field number U.30718 (visible on the label in the fourth view). The obverse (top-centre image) shows clearly ruled horizontal lines dividing the surface into registers or cases, with impressed numeral wedges (the N01 signs) visible at the left of each case and what appear to be sign groups to their right. At least five or six such ruled cases are visible. Individual signs are small and shallow; the wedge impressions are legible in the better-lit upper registers but become indistinct toward the lower portion, consistent with the transliteration's trailing 'x x [x]' and final lacuna. The right-edge view confirms text continues onto the reverse or edge. I can discern numeral impressions matching the N01 counts (single wedge-strokes), and the case divisions align with the transliteration's line structure. The personal names (En-kul-aba-si, Nanna-mud, Igi-gi-gi) and animal logograms (asz2-gar3 = ram, ud5 = she-goat, masz2 = billy-goat/kid) cannot be individually verified at this resolution, but the overall layout — numerals in left sub-column, commodity plus name in right sub-column — is fully consistent with Early Dynastic Ur administrative practice. No clear discrepancies between photo and transliteration detected, though the damaged lower lines cannot be confirmed visually.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 16, 2026 · 2139 in / 1175 out tokens
Transliteration
[1(N01@f)] asz2#-gar3 x-me-en [1(N01@f)] ud5 zur#-zur x x [x] 1(N01@f) masz2 en-kul-aba4-si 1(N01@f) asz2-gar3 nanna#-mud 1(N01@f) asz2-gar3 igi-gi-gi 2(N01@f) masz2 [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P448989) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.