Position in chronology
NRVN 1, 279
About this tablet
A receipt from Nippur, written about 2035 BCE during the reign of Šu-Sîn of Ur. A maltster named Ur-Šulpa'e collects two gur of barley — roughly 600 liters — earmarked as the regular offering for the god Palil, drawing it from a granary sited at the mouth of the Tummal canal. The last three lines are his own seal: name, profession, and father's name, the ancient equivalent of a signature. Documents like this are the paperwork of a temple economy in which brewing, offerings, and canal-side storage were all tracked by scribes and dated by the king's military campaigns.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two gur of barley — the standing allotment for the god Palil — was issued in the harvest month from the granary at the mouth of the Tummal canal. Ur-Šulpa'e, the maltster, took delivery of it. Dated to the year King Šu-Sîn destroyed the land of Zabšali. Sealed by Ur-Šulpa'e, maltster, son of A-tu.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 gur of barley, regular offerings (sá-du₁₁) of (the god) Palil, month: šeš-sag-ku₅ ("harvest"), from the storehouse at the mouth of the Tummal canal — Ur-Šulpa'e, the maltster, has received (it). Year: Šu-Sîn the king destroyed the land of Zabšali (Šu-Sîn 7). (seal inscription) Ur-Šulpa'e, maltster, son of A-tu.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(asz) sze gur sa2-du11 palil2 iti sze-sag11-ku5 ganun ka i7 tum-al-ta ur-szul-pa-e3 munu4-mu2 szu ba-ti mu szu-suen lugal-e ma-da za-ab-<sza>-li mu-hul ur-szul-pa-e3 munu4-mu2 dumu a-tu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — NRVN 1, 279. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y6 — Land of Zabšali destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Ist Ni 00375 (cast: CBS 09727 ?) (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P122496). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.