Position in chronology
JAC 24, 060 06
About this tablet
This is a routine Ur III (c. 2100–2000 BCE) administrative receipt from the provincial city of Umma, recording quantities of finished woolen textiles — several grades of usz-bar and mug cloth — together with their exact weights in talents, mana, and shekels. The goods, described as weaver's wages, passed from an official named Šeš-saga to a recipient named Ur-ašar. Thousands of such tablets survive from Umma's vast state-run textile industry, one of the best-documented bureaucracies of the ancient world; the year name, referring to the destruction of Ḫuḫnuri (a city in the Elamite highlands), anchors the document to a specific military campaign in the reign of one of the later Ur III kings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a workshop receipt. Thirty woven cloths (weighing one talent and forty-five mana in total) were made from mountain wool. Eleven more cloths, weighing thirty-six and a half mana and five shekels, were made from a wool graded 'gi.' Then come twenty-three coarser mug-cloths of different qualities — one top-grade, twenty-one mid-grade, one small — together weighing one talent, fourteen and a half mana, and five shekels. All of this is recorded as payment (wages) for weavers. The goods came from an official called Šeš-saga, and a man named Ur-ašar signed for and received them. The transaction is dated to the month of the Šulgi festival, in the year that the city of Ḫuḫnuri was destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine30 usz-bar textiles, its weight: 1 talent 45 mana — mountain wool (siki-kur-ra). 11 usz-bar textiles, its weight: 36 1/2 mana 5 shekels — gi-wool (siki-gi). 1 mug-textile, kal-quality; 21 mug-textiles, muru13-quality; 1 mug-textile, small (tur); its weight: 1 talent 14 1/2 mana 5 shekels. Wages of the weaver(s) (a2 usz-bar). From Šeš-saga — Ur-ašar received (it). Month: 'Festival of Šulgi' (iti ezem-šulgi). Year: 'Ḫuḫnuri was destroyed' (mu Ḫuḫnuri ba-ḫul).
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(u) tug2 usz-bar ki-la2-bi 1(asz) gu2 4(u) 5(disz) ma-na siki kur-ra 1(u) 1(disz) tug2 usz-bar ki-la2-bi 3(u) 6(disz) 1/2(disz) ma-na 5(disz) gin2 siki-gi 1(disz) tug2 mug kal 2(u) 1(disz) tug2 mug muru13 1(disz) tug2 mug tur ki-la2-bi 1(asz) gu2 1(u) 4(disz) 1/2(disz) ma-na 5(disz) gin2 a2 usz-bar ki szesz-saga-ta# ur-a-szar2 szu ba-ti# iti ezem-szul-gi mu hu-uh2#-[nu]-ri# ba#-hul#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — JAC 24, 060 06. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: TUL LH 10 (Tsurumi University Library, Yokohama, Japan) — from Umma (mod. Tell Jokha) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P448064). 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.