Position in chronology
Amherst 035
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the city of Girsu (modern Tello), part of the vast bureaucratic archive of the Ur III state (around 2000 BCE). It records a disbursement of dabin-flour — used as emergency rations for laborers or troops who had run out of barley — moved by boat and formally sealed by an official named Lugal-ezem, who was also the scribe who wrote the tablet. Its dating formula references a royal military campaign ('the year Shashrum was destroyed'), tying this humble grain transaction to the wider imperial wars of the Ur III kings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A shipment of 5 gur, 1 barig, and 3 ban2 of dabin-flour (measured by the official royal standard) was issued as rations for workers or troops who had no barley left. The flour was held at the e2-ab storehouse and loaded at the canal mouth onto the boat of Ur-šugalama, coming from Ninana. The transaction was sealed by Lugal-ezem. It happened in the extra ('leap') month called Harvest, in the year that Shashrum was destroyed. The document was written by Lugal-ezem, scribe, son of Dada.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 gur, 1 barig, 3 ban2 of dabin-flour (by the royal gur-measure) — provisions for the workers/troops who have no barley, (at/from) the e2-ab (storehouse), stationed at the mouth of the canal, (on) the boat of Ur-šugalama, from Ninana; sealed by Lugal-ezem. Month: extra month, 'Harvest' (sze-sag11-ku5). Year: Shashrum was destroyed. Lugal-ezem, the scribe, son of Dada.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
5(asz) 1(barig) 3(ban2) dabin gur lugal sza3-gal erin2# sze nu-tuku e2-ab i7 kun gub-ba ma2 ur-szu-ga-lam-ma ki nin-a-na-ta kiszib3 lugal-ezem iti diri sze-sag11-ku5 mu sza-asz-ru-um ba-hul lugal-ezem dub-sar dumu da-da
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Amherst 035. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: A.1243_1982 (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P100873). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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.
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.