Position in chronology
SEL 34-36, 263 no. 01
About this tablet
A barley-loan document from Girsu in southern Iraq, written under the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2050 BCE. Atu, son of Lu-gešbare and holder of the office of cattle manager, borrowed 24 gur of barley — roughly 7,200 liters — and rolled his personal seal over the tablet as acknowledgement of the debt, backed by an oath sworn in the king's name. It is a piece of the everyday credit machinery of the Ur III state: a sealed IOU, dated to the harvest month, when barley was plentiful and debts came due.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a loan receipt: 24 gur of barley — about 7,200 liters, measured by the official royal standard — has been borrowed by Atu, son of Lu-gešbare, the cattle manager. This is his sealed tablet, his signed acknowledgement of the debt. The transaction was sworn under oath in the name of the king and dated to the barley-harvest month. Atu's seal, rolled across the tablet, reads: Atu, son of Lu-gešbare, cattle manager.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine24 gur of barley by the royal (measure), barley loan; sealed tablet of Atu, son of Lu-gešbare, the cattle manager (šuš). Month: "Barley harvest" (še-sagku). An oath by the name of the king was placed (sworn). (Seal inscription:) Atu, son of Lu-gešbare, the cattle manager.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(u) 4(asz) sze gur lugal sze ur5-ra kiszib3 a-tu dumu lu2-gesz-bar-e3 szusz3 iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu lugal-ba-gara2 a-tu dumu lu2-gesz-bar-e3 szusz3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — SEL 34-36, 263 no. 01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: LB 0261 (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, P388794). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.