Position in chronology
Anonymous 429941
About this tablet
A small Ur III administrative tablet from Umma (modern Tell Jokha), dated to the first year of King Šu-Suen, around 2037 BCE. It records ten gur of barley — roughly three thousand liters — issued from the account of a man named Lu-gina to be hauled to a place called Kamari, with a rate of one barig attached to each unit, most likely the transport wage. The tablet was sealed by the scribe Šeš-ani, whose own seal legend (name, title 'scribe', and patronymic) is copied at the end. It is a routine piece of grain-transport bookkeeping from one of the best-documented bureaucracies of the ancient world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ten gur of barley, charged at one barig per unit, is to be transported to the [...] of Kamari. The grain comes out of Lu-gina's account, and the transaction is certified under the seal of Šeš-ani. Dated to the month of 'barley-brought-to-the-quay,' in the year Šu-Suen became king. The seal itself reads: Šeš-ani, scribe, son of [name lost].
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 gur — EN — at 1 barig each, barley to be carried, to the ...... of Kamari; from Lu-gina; sealed tablet of Šeš-ani. Month: "Barley-brought-to-the-quay"(?). Year: Šu-Suen (became) king. (Seal inscription:) Šeš-[ani], scri[be], [son of ......].
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(u) gur EN 1(barig)-ta sze ga6-ga6-de3 x-x ka-ma-ri2-sze3 ki lu2-gi-na-ta kiszib3 szesz-a-ni iti sze-kar-ra-gal2-la? mu szu#-suen lugal szesz-[a-ni] dub-[sar] [dumu ...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Anonymous 429941. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šu-Suen y1 — Šu-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 429941 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P429941). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
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.