Position in chronology
SNAT 258
About this tablet
An administrative receipt from the great textile workshops of Girsu in southern Iraq, dated to the seventh year of King Amar-Sin of the Ur III dynasty (ca. 2040 BCE). The state textile industry employed large gangs of women weavers, and this tablet records fish — a staple protein of their rations — being received on their behalf: one large batch for the weavers of Girsu generally, and a smaller batch for the weavers attached to the household of the high priestess of the goddess Baba. It is a small window onto how a highly bureaucratic state fed its industrial workforce, down to the month and the official responsible.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ahum-beli signed for a delivery of 34 gur and 1 ban of fresh fish (over 10,000 liters by the official royal measure), earmarked as rations for the women weavers of Girsu. A second, smaller lot — 6 gur, 3 barig, and 2 ban — went to the weavers who worked for the high priestess of the goddess Baba; the weaver women took receipt of it directly from a man named La'a. Filed in the barley-harvest month of the year the king's army destroyed the city of Huhnuri — the seventh year of Amar-Sin's reign.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine34 gur 1 ban of fresh fish, (measured by) the royal gur — of this fish, (that destined for) the female weavers of Girsu, Ahum-beli received; 6 gur 3 barig 2 ban, (for) the female weavers of the nin-dingir priestess of Baba — from La'a the female weavers received it. Month: "Barley harvest" (še-sag-ku). Year: "Huhnuri was destroyed" (= Amar-Sin, year 7, ca. 2040 BCE).
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
3(u) 4(asz) 1(ban2) ku6 gibil4 gur lugal ku6-ba geme2 usz-bar gir2-su-ka a-hu-um-be-li2 szu ba-ti 6(asz) 3(barig) 2(ban2) gur geme2 usz-bar nin-dingir-ba-ba6 ki la-a-ta geme2 usz-bar-re szu ba-ab-ti iti sze-sag11-ku5 mu hu-uh2-nu-ri ba-hul
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — SNAT 258. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: BM 012282 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P130018). 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.