Position in chronology
UET 2, 0053
About this tablet
This is a small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Ur (modern Tell Muqayyar in southern Iraq), dating to roughly 2600–2500 BCE. It records allocations of beer and food rations — standard administrative bookkeeping tracking who received what. Several named individuals appear, including one called Ur-Nanna (invoking the moon-god Nanna, the chief deity of Ur), and references to a 'great mother' and a 'chancellor' (SUKKAL) suggest the tablet may relate to a temple household. It is a fragment of the everyday bureaucratic machinery of a Sumerian city-state, showing how goods were distributed to personnel of different ranks.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a distribution of beer and grain rations to several individuals at Ur. Ur-Nanna receives one allocation; a 'great mother' overseen by a chancellor receives another; further rations go to a person associated with AN and IM (possibly a title or personal name), a junior official named Ur-something, and the king's goat account. A final summary line records seven ration-units for the king's KAB-DA account. Several entries are too damaged or ambiguous to read clearly.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N01) ? — barley (and) beer — Ur-Nanna, head (person) 1(N01) — head, beer 2(N01) — ration (GAR) — Before/In charge of: BUR, great mother, chancellor (SUKKAL) 1(N01) — head, beer — AN, IM, wife? [PN?] 1(N01) — head, beer — junior/small (TUR), Ur-[PN] 1(N01) — head, beer — king, goat (MASZ) 7(N01) — ration (GAR), king, KAB, DA — [x]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N01@f)? , SZE~a KASZ~a , UR~a NANNA~a SAG 1(N01@f) , SAG KASZ~a 2(N01@f) , GAR , IGI BUR~a AMA~b GAL~a SUKKAL 1(N01@f) , SAG KASZ~a , AN IM~a DAM? X 1(N01@f) , SAG KASZ~a , TUR UR~a 1(N01@f) , SAG KASZ~a , LUGAL MASZ 7(N01@f) , GAR LUGAL KAB DA~a , X
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0053. 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 (P005626) — 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.