Position in chronology
Orient 55, 162 no. 8
About this tablet
An administrative barley account from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, written under the Third Dynasty of Ur, around 2032 BCE — the sixth year of King Šu-Suen. A scribe records several disbursements of barley rations issued from a named threshing floor, each amount tied to a responsible individual, some confirmed by their personal seals. It is a snapshot of the meticulous grain bureaucracy that fed one of the world's earliest centralized states.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger of barley ration payouts from the threshing floor at Du-gub-temena. Adumu signed for about 1.5 gur of barley; a man named Lu-(name broken) signed for nearly 3 gur; just over 5.5 gur came from Šara-kam; Ur-Dumuzida, son of Nam-tur, took 1 barig; and Ur-ga received a little over 6 gur. The record was drawn up in the extra 'leap' month added to the calendar that year — the year King Šu-Suen erected his great stele.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur, 1 barig, 4 ban of barley rations — under seal of Adumu; 2 gur, 4 barig of barley rations, under seal of Lu-[...]; 5 gur, 3 barig, 2 ban of barley rations, from Šara-kam; 1 barig: Ur-Dumuzida, son of Nam-[tur]; 6 gur, 3 ban, 5 sila: Ur-ga; from the threshing floor of Du-gub-temena. Intercalary month. Year: "Šu-Suen, the king, built the great stele."
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz)# 1(barig) 4(ban2) sze-ba gur kiszib3 a-du-mu# 2(asz) 4(barig) sze-ba gur kiszib3 lu2-[...] 5(asz) 3(barig) 2(ban2) sze-ba gur ki szara2-kam 1(barig) ur-dumu-zi-da dumu nam-[tur] 6(asz) 3(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 gur ur-ga2 ki-su7 du6-gub3-temen-na-ta iti diri mu szu-suen lugal-e na-ru2-a-mah mu-du3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 162 no. 8. 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: WCMA 20.1.07 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424374). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.