Position in chronology
MVN 05, 030
About this tablet
A routine receipt from the Sumerian city of Umma, written a little after 2040 BCE under the Third Dynasty of Ur. A man named Lu-ḫegal takes delivery of 660 bundles of reed from the official Ur-Šulpa'ea, earmarked for work on the ceremonial barge of Šara, Umma's city god. Reed was the workhorse material of southern Iraq — used for caulking, matting, fencing and boat-building — and this tablet shows the temple's fleet being maintained out of the same bureaucratic bookkeeping that tracked grain and livestock. The seal at the end identifies Lu-ḫegal as a professional scribe and gives his father's name, though the last lines are broken.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: 660 bundles of reed, issued for the god Šara's processional barge. Lu-ḫegal took delivery of them from Ur-Šulpa'ea. Dated to the month of Nesag, in the year the en-priest En-unugal was installed for the goddess Inanna. The tablet is sealed by Lu-ḫegal himself, described as a scribe and the son of Ur-[...]; the final line naming the master he served is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine660 bundles of reed, for the *magur*-boat of (the god) Šara; from Ur-Šulpa'ea Lu-ḫegal has received. Month: Nesag. Year: En-unugal (was installed) as en-priest of Inanna. (Seal:) Lu-ḫegal, scribe, son of Ur-[...], servant of [...].
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(gesz'u) 1(gesz2) sa gi ma2-gur8 szara2-sze3 ki ur-szul-pa-e3-a-ta lu2-he2-gal2 szu ba-ti iti nesag mu en-unu6-gal inanna ba-hun lu2-he2-gal2 dub-sar dumu ur-[...] ARAD2 [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — MVN 05, 030. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y4 — En-unugal of Inanna installed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 114250 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P114250). 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.