Position in chronology
UET 2, 0176
About this tablet
This heavily fragmented early dynastic tablet from Ur, now held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, appears to be an administrative or accounting document recording quantities of persons, commodities, or rations against institutional categories. The surviving entries list numerical values alongside signs for 'woman/female,' categories of personnel or goods, and possibly a reference to a king or royal institution. Like many proto-cuneiform tablets from Ur, it represents the earliest bureaucratic record-keeping — scribes tracking the flow of people and goods through a temple or palace storehouse. The tablet is broken into multiple pieces with significant surface erosion, making a confident reading of most lines impossible.
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 series of quantities assigned to various categories: six units associated with women and a storehouse; four units of one category; two and a half units linked to a water or liquid designation; and entries for supervisors, junior personnel, and other institutional categories. Toward the end, a possible reference to a king appears. Most lines are too damaged or broken to read fully, and the overall transaction or administrative purpose remains unclear from the fragments that survive.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] X 6(N14@f) , SAL TI [E2~a] — 6 (units): woman/female, alive(?), [storehouse] 4(N14@f) , ME~a NE~a — 4 (units): [category marker] NE 2(N14@f) 2(N01@f) , |(ZU&ZU).SAR~a| A — 2 (units) 2: [(ZU&ZU).SAR] water/liquid [...] 3(N01@f) , BARA2~a AMA~b SI — [...] 3: BARA2, mother(?), SI [...] , [...] X 1(N34@f) 5(N14@f) , GARA2~a NE~a PAP~a GISZ~v PA~a — 1 (large unit) 5 (units): GARA2, NE, elder/supervisor, GISZ, overseer 1(N34@f) 2(N14@f) , PA3 DA~a [...] — 1 (large unit) 2 (units): PA3, DA, [...] 1(N14@f) 4(N01@f) [...] , TUR [...] — 1 (unit) 4: junior/small [...] 5(N01@f) , [...] SAL [...] — 5: [...] woman/female [...] [...] , [...] X 1(N14@f) [...] , [...] , LUGAL[?] [...] — king(?)[...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] X 6(N14@f) , SAL TI# E2~a 4(N14@f) , ME~a NE~a# 2(N14@f)# 2(N01@f) , |(ZU&ZU).SAR~a| A [...] 3(N01@f)# , BARA2~a AMA~b# SI [...] , [...] X 1(N34@f)# 5(N14@f) , GARA2~a NE~a PAP~a GISZ~v PA~a 1(N34@f) 2(N14@f) , PA3# DA~a# [...] 1(N14@f) 4(N01@f) [...] , TUR [...] 5(N01@f)# , [...] SAL [...] [...] , [...] X 1(N14@f)# [...] , [...] , LUGAL#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0176. 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 (P005763) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.