Position in chronology
LB 0236
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative tablet from around the reign of King Shulgi, roughly 2050–2030 BCE. It records rations or labor allotments — barley for workmen, an oil measure, and something connected to an orchard — under the authority of an official named E-hegal, whose seal validated the transaction. The date formula references a real historical event: a military campaign that destroyed the cities of Kimaš and Hurti, a year-name used across the Ur III bureaucracy to date documents, giving us a fixed point in the Sumerian calendar and a glimpse of the empire's eastern wars.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short receipt or ration record. Three laborers each received one barig of barley, drawn from a royal allotment. Two more laborers received something described as 'old' (the meaning is unclear). Two units of a particular oil are also recorded. A line about an orchard or garden is too damaged to read in full. The document was sealed by an official named E-hegal to certify it, dated to the month of the Šulgi festival, in the year when the cities of Kimaš and Hurti and their surrounding territory were destroyed — a standard Ur III dating formula tied to a military campaign.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 workmen, 1 barig barley each, from the king('s allotment). 2 workmen, old(?). 2 (units) of oil-a-TAR. Orchard/garden — ... ... (two signs illegible/broken). Under seal of E-hegal. Month: 'Festival of Šulgi.' Year: 'Kimaš (and) Hurti and their land were 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
3(disz) gurusz 1(barig) sze lugal-ta 2(disz) gurusz libir? 2(asz) i3-a-TAR kiri6 x x kiszib3 e2-he2-gal2 iti ezem-szul-gi mu ki-masz hu-ur5-ti u3 ma-da-bi mu-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — LB 0236. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: LB 0236 (de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P388770). 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.