Position in chronology
UET 2, 0188
About this tablet
A small, heavily weathered proto-cuneiform tablet from Ur, dating to the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2900–2500 BCE). It records numerical notations alongside commodity signs — including what appears to be barley (SZE~a) — together with administrative classifiers such as PA~a (an overseer or ration category) and possibly a festival or institutional context (EZEN). The tablet is so fragmentary that the full transaction cannot be reconstructed, but the surviving signs are consistent with a ration or commodity-allocation record typical of southern Mesopotamian temple administration at this early period. It is one of the earliest forms of written record-keeping in human history, predating fully grammatical Sumerian writing.
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 several quantities — large numbers followed by smaller ones — alongside goods that appear to include barley, administered under an overseer or official category. There is a reference to something connected with a festival or institutional gathering, and further commodities or containers (possibly a measuring basket) are listed, though the surrounding text is broken away. The rest is too damaged to read with confidence.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N50)[?] [...] 2(N14), [...] , PA~a SI |EZEN~a×X| [...] 3(N34@f) 1(N50)? 2(N01@f) [...] , SZE~a [...] [...] , [...] MA BU~a[#] [...] X SI?
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N50)#? [...] 2(N14) , [...] , PA~a SI |EZEN~axX| [...] 3(N34@f) 1(N50)? 2(N01@f) [...] , SZE~a [...] [...] , [...] MA BU~a# [...] X SI?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0188. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005776) — 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.