Position in chronology
CUNES 51-10-056
About this tablet
This is a short Ur III 'letter-order' — a message tablet instructing a subordinate to release goods, one of the most common genres of everyday administrative correspondence from late third-millennium Mesopotamia. Someone (the sender, unnamed here) tells a man named Turam-ili to hand over 2 gur of barley from a sealed storehouse to another individual, Lu-Turam, with the transaction to be witnessed and formally sealed under the authority of the household steward Puzur-x. Such tablets functioned like interoffice memos backed by legal force — the barley release had to be authorized, witnessed, and sealed to be valid.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A note to Turam-ili: please give 2 gur of barley from the sealed storehouse to Lu-Turam. This was done in the presence of the steward Puzur-x, who opened the storehouse for the purpose. Let their document be sealed to confirm the transaction.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineTuram-ili — speak to him! 2 gur barley, from the sealed storehouse (e2-kišib-ba), to Lu-Turam let it be given. Before Puzur-x, the chief steward, the storehouse was opened. Let their sealed document be impressed (sealed).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
tu-ra-am-i3-li2 u3#-na-a-du11# 2(asz) sze gur sza3 e2-kiszib3-ba-ka lu2-tu-ra-am-ra he2#-na-ab-szum2-mu# igi puzur4-x szabra e2 gal2# bi2-tak4#? kiszib3-ba-ne? he2-eb-ra
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — CUNES 51-10-056. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 51-10-056 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P325788). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.