Position in chronology
Anonymous 497561
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III accounting tablet from Girsu recording the repayment of an outstanding grain debt. A man named Lu-Baba, son of Ur-saga, owed 14 gur of royal-measure barley; the tablet records that this deficit was made good, with Lu-bimu receiving the barley on behalf of Ur-bagara. The date formula ties the transaction to the year King Shulgi's forces destroyed the city of Kimaš — one of the standard year-names used across the Ur III empire's bureaucracy to date everyday documents like this one.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt: 14 gur of barley (measured by the royal standard) were handed over to settle an outstanding debt. The barley belonged to the account of Lu-Baba, son of Ur-saga, and came from Ur-bagara's holdings. Lu-bimu is recorded as the one who took receipt of the grain. The transaction is dated to the year that Kimaš was destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine14 gur royal-measure barley — the deficit, repaid. (From) Lu-Baba, son of Ur-saga. From Ur-bagara, Lu-bimu received (it). Year: "Kimaš 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
1(u) 4(asz) sze gur lugal la2-ia3 su-ga lu2-ba-ba6 dumu ur-sa6-ga ki ur-ba-gara2-ta lu2-bi-mu szu ba-ti mu ki-masz ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Anonymous 497561. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 497561 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P497561). 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.