Position in chronology
Orient 55, 167-168 no. 15
About this tablet
A one-transaction livestock receipt from Puzriš-Dagan (modern Drehem), the great royal animal depot near Nippur that funneled tribute and offering animals to the temples of Sumer around 2050 BCE. It records a single goat — a cross between a domestic she-goat and a wild ibex — that died in the herd on the 28th day of the month, with the carcass formally transferred from the herdsman Lu-dingira to the official Šulgi-irimu. Such dead-animal dockets were kept because every head of livestock in the king's accounts had to be accounted for, alive or dead. The year-name dates it to the campaign in which King Šulgi destroyed Šašru, a town in the northeastern hill country.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One nanny-goat, an ibex cross, died on the 28th of the month. The carcass was handed over by Lu-dingira and received by Šulgi-irimu. Filed in the month of the Ninazu festival, in the year the city of Šašru was destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 nanny-goat, ibex-crossbreed, has died; day 28. From Lu-dingira, Šulgi-irimu has received (it). Month: Festival-of-Ninazu. 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.
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Transliteration
1(disz) ud5 a-dara4 ba-usz2 u4 2(u) 8(disz)-kam ki lu2-dingir-ra-ta szul-gi-iri-mu szu ba-ti iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu sza-asz-ru ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 167-168 no. 15. 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: WCMA 20.1.25 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Puzriš-Dagan (mod. Drehem) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424392). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.