Position in chronology
UET 2, 0254
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Ur, dating to the Early Dynastic period (roughly 2900–2350 BCE). It records quantities of commodities — copper, sheep, and seed-grain — under terse numerical entries typical of the earliest Sumerian accounting. Such tablets were the daily paperwork of temple or palace storerooms: brief, formulaic tallies tracking the movement or holding of goods. The surviving signs suggest at least two commodity categories (metal and livestock) were being logged in a single transaction or account summary, making it a characteristic example of the world's earliest bureaucratic record-keeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a damaged entry of six units followed by lost content. The next legible line records one unit of copper — delivered or brought, received by hand, two units [of a measure], deposited — along with more copper. A further entry notes one unit associated with penned sheep (or sheep in an enclosure). An uncertain quantity follows with one larger unit of seed-grain. The final readable line records two sheep. Much of the opening is broken away and cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine6(N01@f)# [...] , [...] 1(N01@f) , copper [brought/delivered?] received(?) 2(N57) [given/deposited?] copper 1(N01@f)# , [BU~a] penned sheep X , 1(N04) seed(-grain) 2(N01@f) , sheep
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
6(N01@f)# [...] , [...] 1(N01@f) , URUDU~a# DU? SZU# 2(N57) RU URUDU~a 1(N01@f)# , BU~a# LAGAB~b UDU~a X , 1(N04) NUMUN 2(N01@f) , UDU~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0254. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005849) — 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.