Position in chronology
TMH NF 1-2, 334
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Nippur in southern Iraq, dating to the reign of Amar-Suen of the Third Dynasty of Ur (around 2040 BCE). What survives is essentially the date — the month of Kin-Inanna — together with a seal inscription naming the king with his full royal titles, Lugal-melam the governor of Nippur, and a scribe attached to the gipar, a sacred residence within the temple precinct. Seals like this were the ancient equivalent of an official signature, tying a routine transaction to the chain of authority running from the king down through the provincial governor to a working scribe.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Dated to the month of Kin-Inanna. Stamped with an official seal that reads: 'Amar-Suen, mighty king, king of Ur, king of the four quarters of the world; Lugal-melam, governor of Nippur; so-and-so, scribe of the treasury, son of [...]-Enlil, scribe of the gipar of Nippur, servant of [...].' In modern terms, it is the date line and official stamp of a government document — the record of the transaction itself is lost or was never on this piece, but the signature block survives, identifying the reigning king, the provincial governor, and the clerk who handled the paperwork.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineMonth: Kin-Inanna (the 6th month at Nippur). (Seal legend:) [Amar-]Suen, [mighty king], [king of Ur], [king] of the four quarters of heaven, Lugal-melam, governor of Nippur; [PN], scribe of the treasury(?), son of [...]-Enlil, scribe of the gipar of Nippur, servant of [...].
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
iti kin-[inanna] [amar-]suen# [lugal kal-ga] [lugal uri5]-ma [lugal] an ub-[da] limmu2-ba lugal-me#-[lam2] ensi2 nibru dub#-sar za3#-ga dumu [...]-en-lil2 dub-[sar] ge6-par4# nibru-ka ARAD2 [x] x [x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — TMH NF 1-2, 334. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: HS 1334 (Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany) — from Nippur (mod. Nuffar) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P134645). 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.