Position in chronology
UET 2, 0169a + 0182b
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Ur, dating to roughly 2900–2500 BCE. It records quantities of goods or commodities — possibly including wood products — associated with an institution or official title involving the NUN sign, a marker of high-status or storehouse origin. The tablet is too broken to reconstruct a complete transaction, but the numerical notation and commodity signs are characteristic of the bureaucratic accounting system that Sumerian scribes used to track the movement of goods. Its survival in multiple fragments reflects the fragility of these earliest written records.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too damaged to read in full. What survives records several entries involving quantities — including at least one larger unit (N14) and several single units (N01) — paired with a time or qualifier marker (U4×N01) whose exact meaning here is uncertain. One legible entry notes a single unit of what appears to be a wood product associated with a well or pit and a high-status institution (NUN). The rest of the text is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 1(N14), |U4×1(N01)| [...] [...], [...] |U4×1(N01)| [...], [...] [...], [...] X 1(N01), GISZ PU2 NUN~a [...] , |U4×1(N01)| [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo5 uncertain terms ↓
- |U4×1(N01)| — A composite sign combining U4 (sun/day/time) with a unit numeral impression. In Early Dynastic administrative texts this may denote a time period (e.g., 'one day') or function as a qualifier for a commodity; exact reading here is uncertain due to fragmentation.
- NUN~a — Later Sumerian NUN = 'prince/lord,' but in proto-cuneiform and Early Dynastic administrative contexts it may be a quality or breed classifier for livestock, or a toponym/institutional marker. The ~a allomorph notation indicates a variant form whose precise phonetic and semantic value is debated.
- 1(N14) — N14 is a higher-order unit in the sexagesimal system; its precise quantitative value (10× or 60× N01) depends on the commodity being counted, which cannot be recovered from surviving text.
- GIŠ PU2 — GIŠ is the determinative for wooden objects or trees; PU2 can mean 'well' or 'pit.' Together with NUN~a this may designate a specific type of wooden well-structure or a named resource, but the context is too damaged to be certain.
- X — An unidentified sign in the transliteration, unreadable from both the transliteration and the photograph.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination of the photograph reveals a multi-fragment tablet presented in several views. The surface is severely abraded and broken across all fragments; the largest central piece shows a cluster of impressed wedges and round impressions consistent with proto-cuneiform/Early Dynastic numerical and sign notation, but individual sign identification at this resolution and preservation level is extremely difficult. The top-left and bottom fragments appear largely plain clay with only faint traces of impressions, corroborating the transliteration's heavy use of lacunae markers. The museum accession numbers (visible on the fragment edges in modern ink: 'Di291B 3/529' and similar) confirm the join of two fragments (0169a + 0182b). On the largest legible face I can tentatively see round impressions (consistent with N01/N14 numerals) and what may be a GIŠ + PU2 sign group, broadly matching the transliteration's line 5. The |U4×1(N01)| composite is a known Early Dynastic sign but cannot be confirmed with certainty from this photograph. No significant discrepancy between photo and transliteration is detectable, though poor preservation prevents positive confirmation of most signs. The glossary entry for NUN~a acknowledging its contested meaning in livestock contexts has been flagged below.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 16, 2026 · 2133 in / 978 out tokens
Transliteration
[...] 1(N14) , |U4x1(N01)| [...] [...] , [...] |U4x1(N01)| [...] , [...] [...] , [...] X 1(N01) , GISZ PU2 NUN~a [...] , |U4x1(N01)| [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0169a + 0182b. 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 (P005754) — 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.