Position in chronology
UET 2, 0161
About this tablet
This is one of the earliest written documents in human history — a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the ancient city of Ur, dating to the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2900–2700 BCE). It records quantities of commodities or institutional categories — plows or plow-teams, cattle, an 'ušumgal' (great serpent, possibly a title or prestigious animal), and entries linked to a storehouse or institutional building of a princely establishment. The signs and numerals follow the characteristic format of Mesopotamian accounting: a number on the left, a commodity or category sign on the right. Though too damaged to reconstruct a full transaction, the tablet is a vivid fragment of the bureaucratic apparatus that managed resources in one of the world's first cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a damaged entry mentioning a plow and what appear to be ration allocations. The surviving lines record: one unit credited to the mother-storehouse associated with the prince's building; two units of cattle linked to an AN-category; three units labeled 'ušumgal' (a term for a great serpent or prestigious title); two units involving a vessel or container of some kind; one larger unit (1 N14) associated with a ruler; and further entries connecting the mother-storehouse to the prince's domain. A balance or deficit notation follows. The final readable line references something 'great' or 'large,' but the rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] X plow, rations, rations 1(N22): mother-storehouse, horn, building-of-the-prince 2(N22): AN, mother-cow 3(N01): great serpent (ušumgal) 2(N22): vessel/boat, [city/place]? 1(N14): ruler, X, [life/arrow?] 1(N22) [...]: [...] 2(N14): [...] mother-storehouse, side-of-the-prince Balance/deficit: LA2 [...] [...]: large/great, X [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , X APIN~a SUM~b SUM~b 1(N22) , AMA~b# SI E2~a NUN~a 2(N22) , AN AMA~b GU4 3(N01) , USZUMGAL 2(N22) , MA# KISZ#? 1(N14) , LUGAL X TI# 1(N22) [...] , [...] 2(N14) , [...] AMA~b# E2~a DA~a# NUN~a , LA2 [...] [...] , GAL~a# X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0161. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005746) — 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.