Position in chronology
UET 2, 0145
About this tablet
A badly fragmented early-dynastic administrative tablet from Ur (ancient southern Iraq), probably dating to around 2600–2400 BCE. The surviving entries record quantities of goods — possibly rations, animals, or institutional commodities — alongside damaged or missing category labels, with a reference to a 'great king' (LUGAL GAL) in one line. The tablet is one of several early proto-cuneiform or early-dynastic administrative documents excavated at Ur, reflecting the record-keeping apparatus of a major Sumerian city-state. Too damaged to reconstruct a single coherent transaction, it nonetheless attests the layered institutional bookkeeping typical of the period.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives on this tablet is a tally of quantities against commodity or institutional categories, most of which are too broken to read. The best-preserved entries give numbers such as 7 units associated with a rationed good (possibly bread), 3 larger units linked to what may be a dagger or knife sign, and entries involving a storehouse, a courtyard area, and calves or young animals. One line preserves a reference to the 'great king.' The rest of the tablet — roughly half the entries — is too damaged or lost to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine7(N01@f) [...] , KAL [GAR] [...] , [NI] GAR 3(N14@f) , [GIR2] , BU X E2 [...] , [KISAL]? X AMAR [...] , X [...] [...] , [...] , LUGAL GAL [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14@f) [...] , [...] 1(N14@f) [...] , [...] 3(N01@f) , X X [...] 1(N14@f) [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
7(N01@f) [...] , KAL~b2 GAR# [...] , NI~b#? GAR# 3(N14@f) , GIR2~a#? , BU~a X E2~a [...] , KISAL~b1? X AMAR [...] , X [...] [...] , [...] , LUGAL GAL~a# [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14@f)# [...] , [...] 1(N14@f) [...] , [...] 3(N01@f) , X X [...] 1(N14@f) [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0145. 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 (P005727) — 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.