Position in chronology
Orient 55, 167 no. 14
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III–period administrative receipt from Puzriš-Dagan (modern Drehem), the great livestock redistribution center that supplied animals for state and temple offerings under the Third Dynasty of Ur. It records a single ewe that died, transferred from the custody of one official, En-dingir-mu, to another, Šulgi-irimu, and dated by month and year-name to around the reign of King Šulgi. Thousands of such tablets survive from Drehem, forming one of the most detailed bureaucratic archives from the ancient world — here we glimpse the routine paperwork tracking even the death of a single sheep.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One ewe died on the 30th day, at Tummal. Šulgi-irimu took receipt of it (the carcass or the loss was formally recorded) from En-dingir-mu. Recorded in the month of the Festival of Ninazu, in the year the en-priest(ess) of Nanna was installed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ewe, died (deceased), 30th day, in Tummal, from En-dingir-mu, Šulgi-irimu received. Month: "Festival of Ninazu" (11th month, Ur calendar), Year: "The en-priest(ess) of Nanna was installed."
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(disz) u8 ba-usz2 u4 3(u)-kam sza3 tum-ma-al ki en-dingir-mu-ta szul-gi-iri-mu szu ba-ti iti ezem-nin-a-zu mu en nanna ba-hun
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — Orient 55, 167 no. 14. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Šulgi y15 — The en-priest of Nanna was installed based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: WCMA 20.1.27 (Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA) — from Puzriš-Dagan (mod. Drehem) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P424394). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-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.