Position in chronology
MVN 05, 051
About this tablet
An Ur III accounting tablet from Umma (modern Tell Jokha), around 2040 BCE, recording the barley needed to feed the sheep kept for the city's regular temple offerings. One hundred fattened sheep — sixty for the god Šara, patron of Umma, and twenty each for the deified kings Šulgi and Amar-Suen — each ate one sila of barley a day; over thirty days that came to 10 gur of grain, drawn from the official Alulu and certified with the governor's seal. Small documents like this show how the Ur III state turned religious duty into precise, auditable arithmetic, and how dead and living kings were maintained in the same ledgers as the gods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Feed requirement for the sacrificial flock: 60 grain-fed sheep for the daily offerings to Šara, 20 for the offerings to Šulgi, and 20 for the offerings to Amar-Suen — 100 head in all, at one sila of barley per animal per day. Over a thirty-day month that comes to 10 gur of barley, issued from Alulu's stores. Certified under the governor's seal. Month of Dumuzi, in the year Šašru was destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine60 grain-fed sheep, 1 sila of barley each — regular offerings of Šara; 20 grain-fed sheep, 1 sila each — regular offerings of Šulgi; 20 grain-fed sheep, 1 sila each — regular offerings of Amar-Suen; for 1 day. For 30 days, its barley: 10 gur. From Alulu. Sealed tablet of the governor (ensi). Month: Dumuzi. Year: Šašru was destroyed.
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(gesz2) udu niga 1(disz) sila3 sze-ta sa2-du11 szara2 2(u) udu niga 1(disz) sila3-ta sa2-du11 szul-gi-ra 2(u) udu niga 1(disz) sila3-ta sa2-du11 amar-suen u4 1(disz)-kam u4 3(u)-sze3 sze-bi 1(u) gur ki a-lu5-lu5-ta kiszib3 ensi2-ka iti dumu-zi mu sza-asz-ru ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — MVN 05, 051. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y6 — Šašru destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 114271 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P114271). 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.