Position in chronology
LB 0241
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Girsu (modern Tello), recording an interest-bearing barley loan issued to a work crew (erin2) and disbursed from a place called Du6-sabara. It bears the seal of a merchant, Ur-Baba, was overseen by an official named Ur-dun, and was conveyed by a courier named A-tu. Its year formula, 'the year Kimaš was destroyed,' anchors it to King Šulgi's military campaigns against the eastern city of Kimaš — a routine bureaucratic slip that happens to preserve a fixed point in Mesopotamian political history.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A record of 3 gur, 4 barig of royal-standard barley, issued as a loan to a group of workers. The grain came from the Du6-sabara depot and was formally withdrawn/booked out from that account. The transaction was sealed by Ur-Baba the merchant, supervised by the official Ur-dun, and handled on the ground by a man named A-tu. It was dated to the month of Amar-a-a-si, in the year Kimaš was destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 gur 4 barig barley, royal (measure) — barley-loan of the erin2 (workers/troops), from Du6-sabara, from the place it was disbursed (booked out). Seal of Ur-Baba, the merchant. Overseer: Ur-dun. Via: A-tu. Month: Amar-a-a-si. Year: Kimaš 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
3(asz) 4(barig) sze gur lugal sze ur5-ra erin2-na du6-sa-bar-ra-ta ki ba-zi-ta kiszib3 ur-ba-ba6 dam!-gar3! nu-banda3 ur-dun! giri3! a-tu! iti amar-a-a-si mu ki-masz ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — LB 0241. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: LB 0241 (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, P388775). 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.