Position in chronology
JCS 54, 002, 04
About this tablet
A small piece of legal-financial paperwork from Nippur, dated to the first year of King Amar-Suen of the Third Dynasty of Ur (around 2046 BCE). Ur-eškuga paid just under five shekels of silver to a man named Du-ili, but the sealed receipt that should have documented the transaction could not be produced, so a third party, Girini, formally took delivery on record. It is a vivid glimpse of how seriously the Ur III bureaucracy treated documentation: even a missing seal impression triggered a written work-around.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ur-eškuga handed over silver — five shekels minus one-sixth of a shekel, so just shy of five — to Du-ili. There was a problem, though: Ur-eškuga's sealed receipt wasn't on hand to document the deal. So instead, Girini formally accepted the silver from him, putting the transfer on record. The clerk dated the memo to the month called 'Eating of the u-bird,' in the year Amar-Suen became king.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 shekels less one-sixth (shekel) of silver — Ur-eškuga gave it to Du-ili. Because the sealed document of Ur-eškuga was not available, Girini received it from him. Month: "Eating-of-the-u-bird" (Ubi-gu). Year: "Amar-Suen (became) king."
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
5(disz)#! gin2 la2 igi-6(disz)-gal2 ku3-babbar ur-esz3-ku3-ga-ke4 du10-i3-li2 in-na-szum2 kiszib3 ur-esz3-ku3-ga nu-u3-gal2-la-ke4-esz giri3#-ni szu ba-an-szi-ti iti# u5-bi2-gu7 mu# amar-suen lugal
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — JCS 54, 002, 04. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Amar-Suen y1 — Amar-Suen became king based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Ist Ni 00228 (cast: CBS 09739 ?) (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P332209). 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.