Position in chronology
Kress 226
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the royal livestock depot at Puzriš-Dagan (modern Drehem), the great redistribution center for animals sent to the crown from across the empire under King Šulgi. It records a single grain-fed gazelle that died (or was slaughtered) on the 25th of the month, handed over from one official, Utamišaram, and received into the account by another, Šulgi-irimu. The year formula dates it to the year Ḫuḫnuri was destroyed — one of Šulgi's later campaign years, making this a tiny but precisely dated fragment of the vast Drehem bureaucracy that tracked royal livestock animal by animal.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One grain-fed gazelle died on the 25th of the month. It came from Utamišaram, and Šulgi-irimu recorded receiving it into the account. The entry is dated to the month called (tentatively) 'festival of Meki-gal,' in the year that Ḫuḫnuri was destroyed — a standard bookkeeping note from the royal livestock office at Puzriš-Dagan.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gazelle, grain-fed, slaughtered/dead, 25th day; from Utamišaram, Šulgi-irimu received it. Month: 'festival of Meki-gal' (?); year: Ḫuḫnuri was destroyed.
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) masz-da3 niga ba-usz2 u4 2(u) 5(disz)-kam ki u2-ta2-mi-szar-ra-am-ta szul-gi-iri-mu szu ba-ti iti ezem-me-ki-gal2? mu hu-uh2-nu-ri ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Kress 226. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Kress 226 (private: anonymous, Germany) — from Puzriš-Dagan (mod. Drehem) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P466177). 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.