Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 32
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Early Dynastic Ur — one of the earliest cities in the ancient world — recording individual allocations of one unit each to a series of named persons or offices. Each line pairs a single quantity notation with a name or title, the kind of terse bookkeeping that temple and palace administrators used to track distributions of rations, commodities, or assignments. Several of the personal names include elements meaning 'young animal' (Amar-) or the moon-god Nanna, both common components in Sumerian names of this period. The tablet is heavily damaged: the upper left edge is broken away, the reverse is almost entirely illegible, and many signs survive only in part — yet even this battered fragment gives a glimpse of the literate bureaucracy operating at Ur over four thousand years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Each surviving entry records a single unit allocated to one individual: Amar-sar, Ur-[broken], Nanna-šul, someone identified by the signs DU8 ŠU (possibly 'received by hand'), then [...]-nirah, Ama-IGI-BUR, Ba-za, Amar-ib, another Nanna-[broken], and two further entries too damaged to read. The first two entries are also too broken to identify fully, though one may involve an aromatic commodity. The rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[1 unit, ...] ŠIM (aromatic/spice?) [1 unit, ...] (name lost) [1 unit,] Amar-sar [1 unit,] Ur-[...] [1 unit,] Nanna-šul? 1 unit, DU8 ŠU [SILA3?] 1 unit, [...]-nirah 1 unit, Ama-IGI-BUR 1 unit, Ba-za 1 unit, Amar-ib [1 unit,] Nanna-[...] 1 unit, [...] PA 1 unit, x [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[1(N01@f) , ...] SZIM# [1(N01@f) , ...] [1(N01@f)] , amar-sar# [1(N01@f)] , ur-[...] [1(N01@f)] , nannax(|SZESZ.NA|)#-szul#? 1(N01@f) , DU8 SZU [SILA3?] 1(N01@f) [...]-nirahx(UET2_153)#? 1(N01@f) , ama-IGI-BUR 1(N01@f) , ba-za7 1(N01@f) , amar-ib [1(N01@f)] , nannax(|SZESZ.NA|)#-[...] 1(N01@f) [...] PA 1(N01@f) , x [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 32. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P449019) — 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.