Position in chronology
UET 2, 0099
About this tablet
An early administrative tablet from Ur, dating to the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2900–2350 BCE), recording quantities of commodities or rations distributed under named categories of officials or recipients. The entries list numbers of units alongside signs for cereal, rations or bread, a temple administrator (sanga), and possibly a young animal or junior person (amar). Tablets like this represent some of the earliest bureaucratic record-keeping in human history — the ancient equivalent of a ledger page from a temple storehouse. The appearance of the sanga title situates this firmly within a Sumerian temple economy at Ur.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a series of commodity allocations, probably from a temple storehouse at Ur. The entries run roughly as follows: 45 units of large rations or bread, associated with NI and flour; 58 units of a processed commodity; 3 units of barley from Ur under an overseer; 3 units involving a female administrator and a statue or figure; 3 units of a mixed or qualified commodity under an overseer; and 4 units assigned to the temple administrator alongside calves or young animals. Several lines are too broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4(N14@f) 5(N01@f) [units] — large GAR [rations/bread]; NI, flour/rations (ZI) 5(N14@f) 8(N01@f) [units] — [commodity] AK (processed/made) 3(N14@f) [units] — barley of Uri (Ur), overseer/PA 3(N14@f) [units] — AMA (mother/female head?), statue/figure (ALAN) 3(N14@f) [units] — [...] mixed? (HI?), overseer/PA 4(N14@f) [units] — sanga (temple administrator), young animal/calf (AMAR) [...] [broken] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
4(N14@f)# 5(N01@f) , X GAL~a GAR , NI~b ZI~a 5(N14@f) 8(N01@f) , AK~a 3(N14@f) , SZE~a URI5 PA~a A# 3(N14@f) , AMA~b# ALAN~a# 3(N14@f) , [...] HI#? PA~a 4(N14@f) , SANGA~a AMAR , [...] , X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0099. 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 (P005674) — 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.