Position in chronology
Amherst 034
About this tablet
This is a short Ur III administrative receipt from Girsu (modern Tello), recording a disbursement of four royal gur-measures of flour drawn from the stores of a woman (or official) named Nin'ana to feed the workers attached to the 'house of the vizier' (e2-sukkal). Such texts were part of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the Ur III state, which tracked grain, labor, and rations down to individual officials and work-gangs. The year formula, referring to the destruction of the city of Šašrum, dates this tablet to a specific royal campaign year (associated with the reign of Amar-Suena), giving it a precise chronological anchor.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This receipt records that four gur of flour — measured by the royal standard — were issued as rations for the work crew attached to the vizier's office. The flour came from the stores of Nin'ana, and the transaction was certified with the seal of the overseer Ur-gigir. It's dated to an intercalary month called 'grain-harvest,' in the year that the town of Šašrum was destroyed — a standard bookkeeping entry from the vast grain-accounting bureaucracy of the Ur III state.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 gur (royal measure) of dabin-flour (coarse flour), for the rations (šagal) of the erin2-workers of the e2-sukkal (the household/office of the vizier), from Nin'ana, under seal of Ur-gigir, the overseer. Month: intercalary month, "the month of ŠE-sag11-ku5" (grain-harvest), Year: "Šašrum was destroyed."
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
4(asz) dabin gur lugal sza3-gal erin2 e2-sukkal-sze3 ki nin-a-na-ta kiszib3 ur-gigir ugula iti diri sze-sag11-ku5 mu sza-asz-ru-um ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Amherst 034. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: A.1242_1982 (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P100872). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.