Position in chronology
HLC 040 (pl. 011)
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative barley account from Girsu (modern Tello), part of the vast bureaucratic archive of the Ur III state (c. 2100–2000 BCE). It records a quantity of barley taken in as fodder and consumed by work-crews during the harvest, sealed by an official named Lu-Lagaš, and dated by a year-name commemorating the destruction of the city of Urbilum (Erbil) — a campaign of king Šulgi. Thousands of such tablets survive from Girsu's temple and provincial administration, tracking grain, labor, and seasonal agricultural work with remarkable precision.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This record logs 24 gur, 4 barig, 3 ban2 of barley (measured by the royal standard) that was taken into official custody as fodder and consumed by a work crew during the harvest season. The document is sealed by an official named Lu-Lagaš. After a gap in the tablet, it is dated to the year Urbilum was destroyed — one of King Šulgi's military campaigns — and names a scribe, apparently Ur-mes, along with a further fragmentary reference to Šulgi himself. The rest of the tablet is broken and illegible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine24 gur 4 barig 3 ban2 barley, royal measure (gur-lugal), as fodder, taken in charge; and by the labor-troops, consumed at the harvest. Seal of Lu-Lagaš. (break) Year: "Urbilum was destroyed." [Ur?]-mes, scribe. ... Šulgi (break)
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
2(u) 4(asz) 4(barig) 3(ban2) sze gur lugal sza3-gal he2-dab5 u3 erin2-na buru14-a gu7-a kiszib3 lu2-lagasz [...] mu ur-bi2-lum ba-hul# [ur?]-mes [dub]-sar# x szul-gi [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — HLC 040 (pl. 011). No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: OIM A31710 (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P109918). 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.