Position in chronology
UET 2, 0172
About this tablet
A badly fragmented proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Ur, dating to the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2900–2350 BCE). The surviving signs record numerical notations — likely quantities of goods — alongside commodity or personnel signs whose exact meanings remain uncertain at this early stage of cuneiform writing. The tablet is too damaged to reconstruct a coherent transaction, but the combination of numerical notations (N14, N01) with signs plausibly relating to water/fish, wood-products, fire/fuel, and a supervisory or summary marker suggests a small institutional ration or commodity account. It is a rare and fragmentary witness to the earliest administrative record-keeping at Ur.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a small accounts fragment, most of it broken away. One entry records a quantity — roughly '1 large unit and 3 small units' — alongside signs that may identify a commodity or official category. Another entry notes '1 large unit' apparently associated with water or fish and a preparation qualifier. A third line seems to list a mixed or processed commodity — perhaps wood or fuel — with a supervisory or summary sign. The rest of the tablet is lost. The text is too fragmentary to reconstruct the specific goods or persons involved.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] ... [...] X [...] 1(N14) 3(N01) , [LA~e?] AN X [...] 1(N14) , A TU~b [...] , HI NE~a PAP~a GISZ~v 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 [...] 1(N14) 3(N01) , LA~e? AN X [...] 1(N14) , A TU~b# [...] , HI NE~a PAP~a GISZ~v X [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0172. 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 (P005759) — 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.