Position in chronology
UET 2, 0215
About this tablet
A heavily damaged Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Ur, likely a ration or allocation record. It lists small numerical quantities — one and two units — alongside signs that appear to designate personnel categories or commodity types, including terms for 'head/person' (SAG), 'woman/female' (SAL), 'ration/bread' (GAR), and a quality or grade marker (KAL~b2). The tablet is too fragmentary to reconstruct a full transaction, but it belongs to the archaic bookkeeping tradition of the Sumerian city of Ur, where scribes tracked distributions of goods to named or categorized recipients. Its interest lies in the glimpse it offers of proto-literate administrative practice at one of ancient Mesopotamia's most important cities.
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 two small allocations: one unit of something described as KAL~b2 (perhaps a quality grade or personnel type) along with a ration (GAR), a 'head' or person (SAG), and a female worker or woman (SAL) — followed by additional signs now too damaged to read. A second entry records two units, again with KAL~b2, but the rest is broken away. The surrounding lines are almost entirely lost. This appears to be a routine distribution record, tracking small quantities of goods or rations against categories of recipients, but the damage leaves the full picture out of reach.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] DUB~a PA3 DA~a? 1 (unit) , KAL~b2 GAR , SAG SUG5 , SAL GIŠZ [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] GAL~a? DA~a X 2 (units) , KAL~b2 [...] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] DUB~a#? PA3 DA~a#? 1(N01@f) , KAL~b2 GAR , SAG SUG5 , SAL GISZ [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] GAL~a#? DA~a X 2(N01@f) , KAL~b2# [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0215. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005810) — 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.