Position in chronology
Orient 55, 164 no. 10
About this tablet
A silver receipt from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, dated to the seventh year of King Šu-Suen of the Third Dynasty of Ur (about 2030 BCE). Gardeners in the state orchard system had fallen short in their accounts, and this tablet records that their outstanding deficit — a third of a mina of silver, roughly 167 grams — was made good and handed over by an official named Šara-kam to the receiving officer Gu-du-du. It is a small window into how tightly the Ur III bureaucracy audited its workers: even arrears were tracked, repaid, and receipted in writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received: one-third of a mina of silver (about 167 grams), covering the repayment of the shortfall that the gardeners owed on their accounts. The silver was handed over by Šara-kam and received by Gu-du-du. Dated to the year in which Šu-Suen, king of Ur, destroyed the land of Zabšali — his seventh year on the throne.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1/3 mina of silver, the repaid arrears (deficit) of the gardeners — from Šara-kam Gu-du-du received. Year: "Šu-Suen, king of Ur, destroyed the land of Zabšali."
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
1/3(disz) ma-na ku3-babbar la2-ia3 su-ga nu-kiri6-ke4-ne ki szara2-kam-ta gu-du-du szu ba-ti mu szu-suen lugal uri5-ma-ke4 ma-da za-ab-sza-li mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 164 no. 10. 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 20.1.18 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424385). 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.