Position in chronology
Nisaba 25, 43
About this tablet
A small, heavily worn Early Dynastic tablet from Ur — one of the oldest cities in southern Iraq, dating to roughly 2600–2500 BCE. It records quantities of goods or rations associated with a festival and with a named or titled individual ('ama-en-du10', possibly meaning 'the good mother-lord'). The numbers are written in the archaic proto-cuneiform numerical system still in use at Ur. The tablet is too fragmentary to reconstruct a complete transaction, but it belongs to the administrative paperwork of a Sumerian temple or institutional household tracking commodity disbursements around festival occasions.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records festival-related allocations at Ur. A certain amount — roughly 2 units of one type — is assigned in connection with a festival and a figure called 'ama-en-du10.' Further quantities of 3 larger units and 3 smaller units follow, but the entries are too broken to read in full. Two units of something — possibly clay tablets or writing material — are noted separately. The closing lines mention an overseer (PA) and some kind of action or processed item (AK). Much of the middle section is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N22@f), festival(?) [of/for] ama-en-du10 3(N14@f) 3(N01@f), [...] [...] x UET2_067(?) 2(N14@f), clay/tablet(?) 3(N14@f) [...] 3(N01@f)? [...] PA AK(?)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N22@f) , EZEM#? ama-en-du10# 3(N14@f) 3(N01@f) , [...] [...] x UET2_067#? 2(N14@f) , IM#? 3(N14@f) [...] 3(N01@f)? [...] PA AK#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — Nisaba 25, 43. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P449030) — 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.
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.