Position in chronology
AuOr 31, 232 01
About this tablet
This is a small Ur III administrative receipt from the royal livestock depot at Puzriš-Dagan (modern Drehem), near Nippur, one of thousands of such tablets recording animals moving through the state's redistribution system. It records two adult billy-goats and one milk-fed lamb that were slaughtered and handed over by a person named Nalu to an official named Ur-nigar, dated by day, month, and the year-name commemorating the fashioning of Enlil's throne (Amar-Suena's second regnal year, c. 2044 BCE). Tablets like this formed the backbone of a vast bureaucratic accounting apparatus that tracked royal and temple livestock across the Ur III state.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
On the 12th day of the month, two mature billy-goats and one milk-fed lamb were slaughtered and delivered. Nalu handed them over, and the official Ur-nigar took receipt of them. The transaction is dated to the month called "Ubi-feast" in the year when the throne of the god Enlil was made — Amar-Suena's second year as king.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 billy-goats (mature male goats), 1 milk-fed lamb, (booked as) slaughtered, day 12, from Nalu, Ur-nigar received. Month: "Ubi-feast" (iti u5-bi2-gu7), Year: "the throne of Enlil was fashioned" (Amar-Suena year 2).
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
2(disz) masz2-gal 1(disz) sila4 ga ba-usz2 u4 1(u) 2(disz)-kam ki na-lu5-ta ur#-nigar szu ba-ti iti u5-bi2-gu7 mu gu-za en-lil2-la2 ba-dim2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 BC)) — AuOr 31, 232 01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format). [year-name] Dated to Ur-Nammu y14 — The throne of Enlil was fashioned based on canonical year-name formula in the transliteration.
Attribution
Image: Anonymous 464281 (private: anonymous, Barcelona, Spain) — from Puzriš-Dagan (mod. Drehem) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P464281). 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.