Position in chronology
JAC 24, 060 07
About this tablet
An administrative memo from Puzriš-Dagan (modern Drehem), the great livestock and labor accounting center of the Ur III state, written around 2045 BCE. It records the deaths of two full-time female workers and calculates the labor the state loses as a result: 720 workdays over a full twelve-month year (2 workers × 360 days). The tablet shows the cold precision of Ur III bookkeeping — even a worker's death was entered into the ledger as a debit of workdays to be cleared from an official's account.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two of our regular full-time female workers have died. Accounting for the period from the first month ('Gazelle-feast') through the twelfth month ('Barley harvest') — twelve months in all — the labor to be written off comes to 720 woman-workdays. This amount has been deducted from the account of Anana. Filed in the year King Amar-Suen destroyed Urbilum.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 female workers, full-time (listed at the head of the tablet), died. From the month 'Gazelle-feast' (month I) to the month 'Barley harvest' (month XII): the labor involved: 720 female-worker workdays; it is (a period of) 12 months. From (the account of) Anana withdrawn (booked out). Year: 'Amar-Suen, the king, destroyed Urbilum.' (Amar-Suen year 2)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(disz) geme2 sag-dub ba-usz2 iti masz-da3-gu7-ta iti sze-sag11-ku5-sze3 a2-bi 1(gesz'u) 2(gesz2) geme2 u4 1(disz)-sze3 iti# 1(u) 2(disz)-kam ki a2-na-na-ta ba-zi mu amar-suen lugal-e ur-bi2-lum mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — JAC 24, 060 07. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y2 — Urbilum destroyed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: TUL LH 07 (Tsurumi University Library, Yokohama, Japan) — from Puzriš-Dagan (mod. Drehem) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P448065). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.