Position in chronology
MVN 15, 334
About this tablet
A short beer-issue record from the Ur III provincial administration at Umma, in southern Iraq, around 2042 BCE (the fourth year of Amar-Sin). It logs beer of ordinary quality handed out to a detachment of soldiers over two days at the end of the month, drawn from the stock of an official named Na-silim and certified with the seal of the scribe Ur-saman, son of Lu-gina. The delivery is charged to the provincial *bala* — the rotating tax and service obligation that each province owed the crown. Documents like this are the routine bookkeeping that made the Ur III state one of the most heavily documented bureaucracies of the ancient world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Beer issued: one barig, one ban, and five sila of standard-grade beer (the opening figure is damaged), plus two barig of standard beer at a rate of one sila, reduced. The beer went to the troops. It was taken from Na-silim's stores and covers the 29th and 30th of the month; it is charged against the province's bala obligation. Dated to the month of the Šulgi Festival, in the year En-unugal was installed as priest of Inanna. Sealed by Ur-saman, scribe, son of Lu-gina.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 1 barig 1 ban2 5 sila of ordinary beer; 2 barig of ordinary beer — its beer(-rate) 1 sila, reduced; beer for the soldiers (aga3-us2). From Na-silim. Sealed tablet of Ur-saman. From the 29th day to the 30th day. Within the bala (obligation). Month: "Festival of Šulgi." Year: "En-unugal was installed (as en-priest) of Inanna." (Seal:) Ur-saman, scribe, son of Lu-gina.
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(barig) 1(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 kasz du 2(barig) du kasz kasz-bi 1(disz) sila3 tur-re kasz aga3?-us2 ki na-silim-ta kiszib3 ur-saman4 u4 3(u) la2 1(disz)-ta u4 3(u)-sze3 sza3 bala-a iti ezem-szul-gi mu en-unu6-gal inanna ba-hun ur-saman3 dub-sar dumu lu2-gi-na
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — MVN 15, 334. 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: SI 344991e (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P118599). 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.