Position in chronology
UET 2, 0134
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Ur, dating to the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2900–2350 BCE). It records quantities of commodities — almost certainly involving sheep or small livestock (UDU), a container or implement category (TUN3~a), a measure (SILA3~a), and possibly garlic or onions (SZUM) — under the oversight of named or titled officials. Tablets of this type are the bureaucratic backbone of early Mesopotamian temple and palace economies: institutional record-keepers tracking allocations of goods, rations, or animals. The fragmentary state means the full transaction cannot be reconstructed, but the surviving signs are consistent with the kind of livestock-and-ration accounting well attested at Early Dynastic Ur.
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 commodity entries: quantities of sheep (or small livestock) associated with a category called TUN3~a, a measured amount (roughly one litre) of something, a head-count or overseer notation (SAG), an entry pairing TUN3~a with a ration allocation (GAR), and a count of what appears to be garlic or onions. Numerical notations — one unit and one larger unit (N08) — accompany these entries. Most of the surrounding lines are broken away and cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...] TUN3~a, sheep 1(N01@f) TUN3~a, SILA3~a [...] [...] [...] [...] — SAG TUN3~a(?) [...] [...] DA~a TUN3~a, GAR 1(N08@f) — SZUM(?) [...] [...] [...] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] TUN3~a UDU~a# 1(N01@f)# , TUN3~a SILA3~a [...] , [...] [...] , [...] , SAG TUN3~a#? [...] [...] , [...] DA~a# TUN3~a GAR 1(N08@f) , SZUM? [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0134. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005714) — 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.