Position in chronology
Anonymous 481004
About this tablet
This is a short Ur III administrative receipt from Umma, recording a length of wool rope — weighing over a talent (about 30 kg) — issued to harness or tow a donkey and goat used with the governor's boat. Such texts document the everyday logistics of the Umma provincial administration: raw wool converted into working cordage for river transport, tracked by weight and sealed under the governor's authority. The closing year-name, referencing the ritual caulking or launching of 'the boat of Enki,' anchors the transaction to a specific royal year in the Ur III calendar (c. 2100–2000 BCE).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A record from the Umma provincial office: one wool rope, used with a donkey and a nanny-goat, weighing about 1 talent and 18 1/3 minas, was made or issued for towing the governor's boat. The material came from a man named Šara-[...] (the rest of his name is broken off), and the transaction was sealed under the governor's authority. It is dated to the year when 'the boat of Enki was caulked' — one of the standard year-names the Ur III kings used to date official documents.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 rope, (for) the female donkey and the nanny-goat — 2. its weight: 1 talent(?), 18 1/3 mina of wool(?) — 3. the towing-rope of the donkey, (for) the boat 4. of the governor; 5. from Šara-[...], 6. under seal of the governor. 7. Year: 'The boat of Enki was caulked.'
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(disz) esz2 eme5 u3 ud5 ki-la2-bi 1(asz) gu2? 1(u) 8(disz) 1/3(disz) ma-na siki? esz2 eme5 ma2 ensi2-ka ki szara2-[...]-ta kiszib3 ensi2-ka mu ma2 en-ki ba-ab-du8
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Anonymous 481004. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 481004 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P481004). 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.