Position in chronology
Anonymous 481001
About this tablet
This is a small barley account from the Ur III administrative archive at Umma, one of thousands of such tablets that kept meticulous track of grain owed by or issued to named individuals — here two men, Ur-dani and Šara-ma'adu, each associated with fixed quantities of barley (1 gur 3 ban2 apiece) and linked to overseers responsible for oxen teams and field labor. The tablet is dated by a year-name referencing the fashioning of a golden throne for the god Enlil, a formula scholars associate with the reign of king Amar-Suena. Such texts are the backbone of our knowledge of Ur III bureaucracy: crops, labor, and personnel tracked village by village, month by month, under royal administration.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record logs two barley allotments of 1 gur 3 ban2 each. The first is credited to Ur-dani, son of Ur-amma the farmer, issued from the account of Lugal-kuzu, an oxen-team supervisor. The second goes to Šara-ma'adu, charged against the account of a foreman named Akalla, with a note that an additional amount is to be added — the exact reason is unclear due to a damaged phrase. The entry is dated to the second month of the Umma calendar, under the authority of the foreman Lugal-mea, in the year the golden throne of the god Enlil was made (a year-name of king Amar-Suena). The tablet breaks off after this, and it closes with a scribe's identification — his name is lost, but he is recorded as son of a man whose name is only partly legible (Lugal-AN?-...).
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(aš) 3(ban2) [barley]: Ur-dani, son of Ur-amma, the plowman (farmer) — from Lugal-kuzu, the overseer of oxen (ox-driver foreman). 1(aš) 3(ban2) [barley]: Šara-ma'adu, charged against Akalla, the foreman(?) — is to be added from the ...-day(?) [dal]. Month: 'Min-eš' (the second eš-month). Foreman: Lugal-mea. Year: 'The (golden) throne of Enlil was fashioned.' [...] (break — text lost) Scribe: [...], son of Lugal-AN?-...
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
1(asz) 3(ban2) ur-da-ni dumu ur-am3-ma engar ki lugal-ku3-zu nu-banda3-gu4-ta 1(asz) 3(ban2) szara2-ma-a-du ugu2? a-kal-la nu?-banda3? it dal-ta dah-he-dam iti min-esz3 ugula lugal-me-a mu ku3 gu-za en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2 [...] dub-[sar] dumu lugal-AN?-x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Anonymous 481001. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 481001 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P481001). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.