Position in chronology
Anonymous 497570
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Umma, recording a delivery of reed — three bundles plus a quantity of finer gisal-reed — brought by boat and destined for the 'E-mash,' likely a goat-pen or animal enclosure attached to a temple or estate. The transaction is authenticated by the seal of an official named Damu, dated by month and by a year-name commemorating the destruction of a place called Bitum-rabium, and closed with the name of the scribe, Ushmu, son of Lugal-[...]. Thousands of such texts survive from Umma's temple and provincial archives, giving a granular picture of everyday resource management under the Third Dynasty of Ur.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records that three bundles of reed, along with gisal-reed, were delivered from a barge to the goat-pen (E-mash). The transaction was sealed by an official named Damu. It is dated to the month of Dal, in the year that Bitum-rabium was destroyed. The document was written by the scribe Ushmu, son of Lugal-[...], whose father's name is broken off at the edge of the tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 bundles of reed, gisal-reed, for the E-mash (goat-house), from the barge, under seal of Da-mu. Month: Dal. Year: 'Bitum-rabium was [destroyed].' Ush-mu, scribe, son of Lugal-[...].
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
3(disz) gu-kilib gi gi-sal4 e2-masz-sze3 mar-sa-ta kiszib3 da-mu iti dal mu bi2-tum-ra-bi2-um ba-[hul] usz-mu# dub-sar dumu lugal-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Anonymous 497570. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 497570 (private: anonymous, unlocated) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P497570). 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.