Position in chronology
TMH NF 1-2, 235
About this tablet
A fragmentary administrative record from Nippur in the Ur III period (around 2100–2000 BCE), belonging to the state's textile accounting. It lists garments by type — including capes and fine-grade cloth — together with their weight, and closes with the name of the responsible scribe, Ur-AN-..., whose full name is broken away. Tablets like this are the routine paperwork of the world's first large textile industry, where wool cloth was weighed, graded, and tracked piece by piece.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a warehouse slip for cloth. Some number of textiles are logged — the count is broken off — along with their total weight, which is also lost. Then come at least one cape-style garment and at least one piece of fine-quality cloth; the exact quantities before each entry are damaged. After an illegible line, the record is signed off by the scribe Ur-AN-..., whose full name and the rest of the tablet are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [x] textile(s) [...] their weight: [...] [n +] 1 cape garment(s) (tug2 gu2-e3) [n +] 1 fine-quality garment(s) (tug2 nig2-lam2) [...] ... [...] Ur-AN-[...], the scri[be]. [...] (remainder lost)
Our translation engine — Fable 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
[x] tug2# [...] ki#-la2-bi# [...] [n] 1(disz) tug2 gu2-e3 [n] 1(disz) tug2 nig2-lam2 [x] x x x [...] ur-AN-[...] dub-[sar] [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — TMH NF 1-2, 235. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: HS 1235 (Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P134546). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.