Position in chronology
Anonymous 497528
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Girsu (modern Tello), recording a disbursement of syrup and fine oil drawn from a man named Ur-gu'enna to supply an unnamed festival. It was sealed and recorded by the scribe Lu-Ningirsu, and dated by a year-name commemorating the destruction of the city of Urbilum — a formula that lets modern scholars pin the tablet to a specific year in the reign of the Ur III king Shu-Sin. Tablets like this, though modest, are the backbone of our knowledge of Mesopotamian temple and palace economies, showing how small quantities of luxury goods (honey, fine oil) were tracked for ritual occasions.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This receipt records that 1 5/6 sila of syrup and 10 shekels of fine oil were issued from the stock of a man called Ur-gu'enna, earmarked as supplies for a festival. The transaction was recorded in the month called 'Harvest' and sealed by the scribe Lu-Ningirsu, who signs off at the bottom of the tablet. The document is dated by the year in which the city of Urbilum was destroyed — a standard way Ur III scribes dated their records, referencing a notable military event of that year rather than a numbered year.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 5/6 sila3 syrup (lal3), 10 gin2 fine oil (ir-nun-oil), from Ur-gu'enna(?), goods for the festival, month: "Harvest" (Še-sag11-ku5?), under seal of Lu-Ningirsu. Year: "Urbilum was destroyed." Lu-Ningirsu, scribe.
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) 5/6(disz) sila3 lal3 1(u) gin2 i3 ir-nun ki ur-gu2-en-na?-ta? nig2 ezem-ma iti sze-sag11-ku5? kiszib3 lu2-nin-gir2-su mu ur-bi2-lum ba-hul lu2-nin#-gir2#-su# dub-sar#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Anonymous 497528. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 497528 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P497528). 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.