Position in chronology
BM 014751
About this tablet
This is a small administrative receipt from Puzriš-Dagan (Drehem), the Ur III dynasty's great livestock and provisioning depot near Nippur, where fish, herd animals, and other commodities from across the kingdom were tallied and redistributed. The tablet records fixed quantities of fish — some by volume (gur/barig/ban2 measures) and some by count, sorted into 'good' and 'ordinary' grades — issued as wages or rations for assigned labor. A local official named Lu-Ninšubur supplied the fish, a foreman named Warad-mu oversaw it, and a man named Ur-mes formally received the delivery, all dated to a specific day in the Ur III bureaucratic calendar. The year name references a royal military campaign against the mountain peoples of Simurrum and Lullubu, tying this mundane fish account to the wider political history of King Šulgi's reign.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This receipt logs a fish shipment at the Drehem depot: 4 gur 1 barig of fish entered as returned stock, plus 6 gur 4 barig 4 ban2 of dried fish. Separately, 1,252 fish of good quality and 1,104 fish of ordinary quality were handed out as pay for assigned labor. The fish came from a man named Lu-Ninšubur, under the supervision of foreman Warad-mu, and the whole delivery was formally booked in and received by a man called Ur-mes. The transaction is dated to day 24 of the harvest month, in the year that Simurrum and Lullubu were destroyed for the ninth time.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 gur, 1 barig of fish — returned goods (nig2-ki-gur2). 6 gur, 4 barig, 4 ban2 of dried(?) fish (ku6-šeš/šeg6). 1,252 (fish): good-quality allotment. 1,104 (fish): ordinary allotment. — labor/wages for task-work (a2 geš-gar-ra). From Lu-Ninšubur. Foreman: Warad-mu. Booked in as delivery (mu-DU). Ur-mes received (it). Month: "Harvest" (ševa-sag-ku), day 24. Year: "Simurrum (and) Lullubu were destroyed for the 9th time."
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
4(asz) 1(barig) ku6 nig2-ki gur 6(asz) 4(barig) 4(ban2) ku6-sze6 gur 2(gesz'u) 5(u) 2(disz) ba saga 1(gesz'u) 8(gesz2) 2(u) 4(disz) ba du a2 gesz-gar-ra ki lu2-nin-szubur-ta ugula ARAD2-mu mu-kux(DU) ur-mes szu ba-ti iti sze-sag11-ku5 <u4> 2(u) 4(disz)-<kam> mu si-mu-ru-um <<lu-lu-bu>> lu-lu-bu a-ra2 1(u) la2 1(disz@t)-kam#-asz# ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — BM 014751. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: BM 014751 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Puzriš-Dagan (mod. Drehem) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P316112). 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.