Position in chronology
UET 2, 0126
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Ur, probably dating to around 2900–2500 BCE, recording allocations or categories of commodities and personnel in proto-cuneiform script. Each surviving line pairs a numerical token (one unit) with a cluster of signs whose precise meanings remain contested — likely denoting ration categories, official titles, or commodity types associated with named institutional roles. The tablet is fragmentary, with its top and bottom broken away, and the reverse is blank or uninscibed. It belongs to the earliest horizon of Mesopotamian record-keeping, where signs are still largely pictographic and their exact administrative function is a matter of ongoing scholarly debate.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this tablet records a series of single-unit entries, each pairing one counted item with a group of signs that probably identify a type of commodity, a personnel category, or an institutional label. One entry seems to involve some kind of dairy or fat product alongside signs for 'elder/supervisor' and an overseer designation. Another records something associated with 'interior' and 'water.' A third links the sign for 'king' or 'ruler' with further qualifiers. A fourth involves a vessel type and a person category. The opening and closing lines, which mention young animals (calves), are too broken to read fully. The rest of the tablet's reverse is lost or uninscribed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...] calf/young animal 1(N01@f) , GARA2 NE PAP GISZ PA 1(N01@f) , |SZU2.2(N57)| heart/interior + water 1(N01@f) , LUGAL ME SI 1(N01@f) , |DUG~a×HI| LU2 [...] , [...] calf? calf
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] AMAR 1(N01@f) , GARA2~a NE~a PAP~a GISZ~v PA~a 1(N01@f) , |SZU2.2(N57)| SZA3~a1 A 1(N01@f) , LUGAL ME~a SI 1(N01@f) , |DUG~axHI| LU2 [...] , [...] AMAR#? AMAR
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0126. 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 (P005706) — 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.