Position in chronology
UET 2, 0182a
About this tablet
An early-dynastic administrative tablet from Ur (modern Tell Muqayyar, southern Iraq), dating to roughly 2600–2500 BCE, recording quantities of commodities — likely grain and livestock, particularly sheep — against institutional categories such as a storehouse, a gate or door, and overseer designations. The tablet is heavily damaged and survives only as a fragment, but its format of numeric notation followed by commodity and category signs is typical of the proto-cuneiform and early archaic bookkeeping produced by Ur's temple administration. It is one of the earliest layers of written record-keeping in human history, where scribes were developing the very conventions of literacy to manage large redistributive economies. Though too fragmentary to reconstruct a complete transaction, it gives a glimpse into how Sumerian institutions tracked disbursements and stock.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving lines record a series of quantity entries against institutional labels: a batch of 3 units of some commodity under the NI/ZI category; 22 units noted as disbursed, interior, not [completed?], from [a source]; 2 talents 4 units under an overseer category; 6 talents each assigned to a 'new storehouse' and to a 'large gate'; 4 talents 3 units linked to a tablet-record beside [something]; 2 talents 3 units of sheep counted twice; and further damaged entries involving a ration-portion marker and a mixed grain-spice commodity. Much of the text is too broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] 3 (units) , NI ZI 22 (units) , disbursement (E3), within (ŠA3), not (NU), from (TA) 2 talents 4 (units) , PA overseer/category, A, X [...] [...] , [...] 6 talents , [...] storehouse (E2), new/fresh (GIBIL) 6 talents , large/great (GAL), door/gate (IG) 4 talents 3 (units) , tablet-record (DUB), beside/alongside (DA) [...] 2 talents 3 (units) , sheep (UDU), sheep (UDU) [...] 1 talent [...] , SI, X [...] , [...] BAR, door/gate (IG) , [...] |NINDA2׊IM|
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] 3(N04)# , NI~b# ZI~a 2(N19)# 2(N04) , E3~a SZA3~a1# NU TA~f 2(N14) 4(N04) , PA~a A X [...] [...] , [...] 6(N19) , [...] E2~a GIBIL 6(N19) , GAL~a IG~a 4(N14) 3(N04) , PA3 DUB~a# DA~a [...] 2(N14) 3(N04) , UDU~a# UDU~a [...] 1(N14) [...] , SI# X [...] , [...] BAR IG~a , [...] |NINDA2xSZIM~a|#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0182a. 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 (P005769) — 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.