Position in chronology
AAICAB 1/3, pl. 180, Bod A 04
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from Girsu (modern Tello), recording a delivery of 16 gur and 4 barig of dabin-flour (a coarse wheat/barley flour), measured by the 'royal' gur standard, transported by boat and formally sealed by an official named Nig-baba. It closes with the standard bureaucratic apparatus of the period — the month name, a year-name referencing the construction of the famous 'Amorite wall' (a defensive wall built under King Shu-Sin, roughly 2030s BCE), and the scribe's identity and lineage. Thousands of tablets like this survive from the vast Ur III state granary and redistribution system; this one is a routine flour transfer voucher, notable mainly for pinning an exact year and naming the officials responsible.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records that 16 gur and 4 barig of dabin-flour (using the royal measuring standard) arrived by boat from someone whose name ends in '-silim'; the transaction was certified with the seal of an official named Nig-baba. It is dated to the month called 'muš-šu-du7' in the year when the Amorite wall was built (Shu-Sin's fourth year). The document then names Nig-baba again, identifying him as the accountant, son of Namhani, and closes with a final line naming a recipient — apparently someone associated with the name Baba — but the very end of that line is broken and cannot be fully read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine16 gur, 4 barig of dabin-flour, royal measure (gur lugal) — from the boat of [...]-silim; sealed tablet of Nig-baba. Month: "muš-šu-du7"; Year: "the wall of the Amorites was built." Nig-baba, the accountant (dub-sar nig₂-si-sa₂), son of Namhani — for Baba-...-še(?) [broken].
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(u) 6(asz) 4(barig) zi3 dabin gur lugal ma2 [...]-silim-ta kiszib3 nig2-ba-ba6 iti mu#-szu-du7 mu bad3 mar-tu ba-du3 nig2-ba-ba6 dub-<si-sa2>-sar dumu nam-ha-ni ba-ba6-x?-sze3?#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AAICAB 1/3, pl. 180, Bod A 04. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y37 — The Amorite wall was built based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Bod A 004 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P248967). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.