Position in chronology
AuOr 31, 232 02
About this tablet
This is a small clay tablet from Puzriš-Dagan (Drehem), the great livestock redistribution center of the Ur III state, dated to the reign of a king in whose year the high priest or priestess of Eridu was installed. It records that one animal died and that responsibility for the loss passed formally from one official, Uta-mišaram, to another, Šulgi-irimu, who 'received' the carcass or the accounting entry for it. Thousands of tablets like this survive from Drehem, forming a vast bureaucratic record of the movement, feeding, and death of livestock destined for temple offerings and royal use — this one preserves the mundane but historically valuable trace of an animal's death being logged so no one would be blamed for a missing beast.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One animal (the exact kind is lost to a break in the tablet) died on the 13th day of the month. The loss was recorded as transferred from Uta-mišaram to Šulgi-irimu, who took receipt of it — likely meaning he formally acknowledged the death for the state's accounting records rather than physically receiving a living animal. The entry is dated to the month of Akiti, in the year when the high priest or priestess of Eridu was installed. The tablet closes with a total of one, confirming a single animal is being accounted for.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[1 (animal, broken)] ... died. 13th day. From Uta-mišaram, Šulgi-irimu received. Month: Akiti. Year: "the en-priest(ess) of Eridu was installed." 1 (total).
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) ...] ba-[usz2] u4 1(u) 3(disz)-[kam] ki u2-ta2-mi-szar-ra-am#-ta szul-gi-iri-mu szu ba-ti iti# a2#-ki-ti mu en eridu ba#-[hun] 1(disz)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AuOr 31, 232 02. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 464282 (private: anonymous, Barcelona, Spain) — from Puzriš-Dagan (mod. Drehem) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P464282). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.