Position in chronology
UET 2, 0278
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 counts of commodities, animals, or institutional categories — including what appears to be a calf assigned to the moon-god Nanna and statues or figurines associated with the Abzu, the subterranean freshwater domain central to Sumerian religion. The tablet is too damaged and fragmentary for a confident line-by-line reading, but it belongs to the earliest stratum of written record-keeping: temple accountants at Ur tracking offerings, livestock, or cultic objects. Its survival in the British Museum's collection traces back to Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur in the 1920s–30s.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The account lists several categories of goods or animals with their quantities, most of which are too damaged to read clearly. Eight units of something involving AN and reed(?) signs are noted at the top. Three units follow under a different category. Further down, one calf is recorded under the name of the moon-god Nanna, and four items — likely statues or figurines — are attributed to the Abzu. A single entry mentions what may be a mother-figure or female overseer alongside a qualifying term. The rest of the tablet's entries are broken away or illegible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine8 [units] — AN, [head(?)] GI(?), SZU, SUM, SUM(?) 3 [units] — ME, SI, NUN 2 [units] [...] — [...] 1 [unit] — [...] 2 [units] [...] — [...] 1 [unit] — [...] X [...] — X X [...] 1 [unit] — calf of Nanna 4 [units] — statue(s) of the Abzu — X, A 1 [unit] — KA, mother(?), mixed(?) —
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
8(N14) , AN# SAG@g? GI#? SZU SUM~b SUM~b? 3(N01) , ME~a SI NUN~a 2(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 2(N14)# [...] , [...] 1(N01)# , [...] X [...] , X X [...] 1(N14) , AMAR# NANNA~a# 4(N14) , ALAN~a ABZU , X A 1(N01) , KA~a AMA~b HI ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC)) — UET 2, 0278. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P005868) — 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.