Position in chronology
UET 2, 0011
About this tablet
A heavily damaged early-dynastic administrative tablet from Ur, dating to roughly 2900–2600 BCE, recording commodities and institutional categories in the archaic proto-cuneiform tradition. The surviving entries mention aromatics or spices, birds, an agricultural implement (possibly hoes), equids (donkeys or related animals), salt, and barley — the kind of mixed-commodity ledger typical of large southern Mesopotamian temple or palace storerooms. Several signs remain ambiguous or belong to rare sign classes (ZATU687 being an as-yet-unresolved archaic form), making a fully confident reading impossible. The tablet is one of many early administrative documents excavated at Ur, demonstrating that systematic record-keeping preceded classical Sumerian literacy by centuries.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too broken for a continuous reading, but what survives records a series of commodity entries: aromatics or spices and some kind of fuel or fire material; a count of one unit associated with birds; a large quantity of what may be hoes or a related agricultural category, linked to water and an institutional assembly; an entry pairing salt with equids (donkeys or draft animals); a processed or manufactured item of an unknown type (ZATU687 is an archaic sign without a settled meaning); and a closing entry linking barley and salt. The rest of the tablet is lost or too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] X [...] , aromatic(s) / spice(s), fire/fuel [...] 1 (unit/ration) , [...] X — bird(s) [...] , [...] hoe / agricultural implement, water(?), assembly/institutional group , salt(?) — equid(s) , processed/made — ZATU687 [...] , barley(?) — salt(?)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] X [...] , SZIM~a NE~a# [...] 1(N01) , [...] X MUSZEN [...] , [...] AL A UKKIN~a# , MUN~b#? ANSZE~b , AK~a ZATU687 [...] , SZE~a#? MUN~b#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0011. 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 (P005585) — 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.