Position in chronology
UET 2, 0170
About this tablet
A heavily damaged Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Ur, dating to roughly 2900–2500 BCE, recording allocations or inventories of personnel and commodities under institutional headings. The surviving entries list small numerical quantities — using the archaic notation system of impressed circles and wedges — alongside signs for workers, buildings, and officials. Terms like LUGAL ('king/lord'), E2~a ('house/storehouse'), and ERIM~a ('workers/men') suggest this is a temple or palace labor and resource account. The tablet is too fragmentary to reconstruct its full purpose, but it is a characteristic piece of Early Dynastic Ur's bureaucratic record-keeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The opening lines are too broken to read. What survives records several small allocations: four units of something associated with SI and NAGA~a (perhaps horns and natron, or related commodities); one unit of water or a liquid (A); one unit for a large storehouse or institutional building. Further broken lines follow. Then: one 'NAM2' unit, two units of workers (ERIM~a) whose entry is partially lost, and one unit of something involving a head-count (SAG) and SUG5. The closing lines mention a calf or young animal (AMAR) in connection with a lord's house (EN2 E2~a), and a royal or lordly figure (LUGAL) associated with BU~a, an overseer designation (PA~a), and something described as pure or clean (SIKIL). The rest is lost or too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] SAR~a? X 4(N01@f) , X SI NAGA~a 1(N01@f) , A 1(N01@f) , E2~a [large] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] SAG UR~a 1(N14@f) , NAM2 2(N14@f)# [...] , ERIM~a? [...] 1(N01@f)# [...] , X SAG SUG5 [...] , AMAR EN2 E2~a [...] , LUGAL# BU~a PA~a SIKIL?
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] SAR~a#? X 4(N01@f) , X SI NAGA~a 1(N01@f) , A 1(N01@f) , E2~a# GAL~a [...] , [...] [...] , [...] SAG UR~a 1(N14@f) , NAM2 2(N14@f)# [...] , ERIM~a#? [...] 1(N01@f)# [...] , X SAG SUG5 , AMAR EN2 E2~a , LUGAL# BU~a PA~a SIKIL?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0170. 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 (P005756) — 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.