Position in chronology
UET 2, 0154
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 or disbursements associated with an institutional space — likely a courtyard or storage area (KISAL) — along with signs that may indicate an overseer or official (PA~a) and a delivery or commodity notation (DU MA NI~b). The tablet is too fragmentary to reconstruct a complete transaction, but it belongs to the well-known tradition of Mesopotamian temple and palace bookkeeping that tracked goods moving in and out of administrative compounds. Its survival in the British Museum, excavated at Ur, links it to the earliest layers of organized urban record-keeping in southern Iraq.
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 handful of quantity entries tied to institutional locations — most likely courtyards or storage areas — along with references to an official or overseer and what may be a commodity delivery involving oil or fat. One entry registers a quantity against the sign for PA (overseer or category); another pairs a numerical notation with signs for delivery, a container or vessel, and a fatty substance. Two further lines record small quantities (one large unit, then two small units) assigned to a courtyard or compound. The rest of the text is lost to damage and breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 1(N22), PA~a [...] 2(N22)[?] [...], DU MA NI~b [...] X, A [...] [...] 1(N14), KISAL~b1 [...] [...] 2(N01), KISAL~b1 [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] 1(N22)# , PA~a [...] 2(N22)#? [...] , DU MA NI~b [...] X , A [...] [...] 1(N14)# , KISAL~b1 [...] [...] 2(N01)# , KISAL~b1 [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0154. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005737) — 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.