Position in chronology
LB 0239
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Girsu (modern Tello), recording a disbursement or transfer of a quantity of baked bread measured by the royal gur — a standard capacity unit used throughout the Neo-Sumerian bureaucratic state. It was sealed by an official named Lu-gula, son of Ur-igizibara, who also appears as the scribe who drew up the document. The year-name, 'the year following Kimaš was destroyed,' anchors the tablet to the reign of king Šulgi of Ur, whose 47th year commemorated the conquest of the city of Kimaš — so this receipt dates to roughly one year later, around 2046 BCE. Thousands of such workaday receipts survive from Ur III Girsu, together forming one of the best-documented bureaucracies of the ancient world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A record of 1 gur, 2 ban2, and 6 sila3 (roughly 366 liters) of baked bread, issued from the holdings of a man named Namhani. The transaction was sealed by Lu-gula, son of Ur-igizibara. It is dated to the month called 'Harvest' in the year following the one in which the city of Kimaš was destroyed — the standard way Ur III scribes dated documents, by naming a notable event of a recent year. The document closes by naming Lu-gula again, identifying him as the scribe and son of Ur-igizibara who both handled and recorded the transaction.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 gur, 2 ban2, 6 sila3 of baked bread — royal gur (measure). From Namhani. Sealed by Lu-gula, son of Ur-igizibara. Month: "Harvest" (Ševat / itiŠE-KIN-KUD). Year following: "Kimaš was destroyed." Lu-gula, scribe, son of Ur-igizibara.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(asz) 2(ban2) 6(disz) sila3 ninda du8-a gur lugal ki nam-ha-ni-ta kiszib3 lu2-gu-la dumu ur-igi-zi-bar-ra iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu us2-sa ki-masz ba-hul lu2-gu-la dub-sar dumu ur-igi-zi-bar-ra
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — LB 0239. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: LB 0239 (de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P388773). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.