Position in chronology
UET 2, 0114
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Ur (modern Tell Muqayyar, southern Iraq), probably dating to around 2700–2500 BCE. It records quantities of livestock — primarily sheep and young animals (calves) — alongside vessel counts and allocations, under the oversight of a sanga temple official. The lower section tracks deficits or outstanding balances in rations or allocations. This is the routine bookkeeping of a Sumerian temple or institutional household, capturing the movement and accounting of animals and commodities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too damaged at the top to read fully, but surviving entries record: one jar associated with a young animal; one entry for sheep (possibly two sheep); and a further entry listing three units under a temple administrator, again involving young livestock. Several lines in the middle are lost. The bottom section records a balance or deficit: four units with two sub-units against a ration allocation, and five sub-units against another ration allocation possibly linked to a person or category designated MUSZ3 — the rest of that line is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] 1(N14) , [...] KALAM~a 1(N51) , vessel (|DUG~a×HI|) — calf/young 1(N51) , sheep — sheep [...] 3(N14) , sanga-official — calf/young [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 4(N51) 2(N14) , deficit/balance — ration/allocation 5(N14) , deficit/balance — ration/allocation — MUSZ3~a [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] 1(N14)# , [...] KALAM~a# 1(N51) , |DUG~axHI| AMAR 1(N51) , UDU~a UDU~a [...] 3(N14) , SANGA~a AMAR [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 4(N51) 2(N14@f) , LA2 GAR 5(N14@f) , LA2 GAR MUSZ3~a#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0114. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005694) — 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.