Position in chronology
AAS 012
About this tablet
An administrative livestock record from the ancient city of Umma in southern Iraq, dating to the Akkadian period (roughly 2300–2100 BCE). A scribe has carefully tallied a group of sheep and lambs — some assigned to named individuals or deities, one to a cook, others selected or returned — and summed them as an official disbursement or expenditure. Tablets like this one are the bread-and-butter of Mesopotamian record-keeping: short, precise, and meant for institutional archives rather than posterity. They tell us that ancient bureaucracy was very much alive and counting its animals.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a disbursement record for livestock: 2 specially selected sheep, then individual lambs allocated to the UD-HUB₂ account, to Dumuzi, to Lugal-pa-e₃, and 1 sheep for the cook, plus 5 lambs for Ab-zu. A further 11 sheep were returned or handed back in some capacity. The grand total comes to 14 sheep and 9 lambs, all recorded as expenditure — goods officially issued out of the institution's stock.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 sheep chosen by the heart (= selected) 1 lamb [of/for] the edge (side) of UD-HUB₂ 1 lamb [for/of] Dumuzi 1 lamb [for/of] Lugal-pa-e₃ 1 sheep [for the] cook (muhaldim) 5 lambs [for/of] Ab-zu [1]1 sheep [as] goat(s)? returned/brought back (šu-gi₄-gi₄) Total: 14 sheep, 9 (= 10 minus 1) lambs Expenditure (zi-ga)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo5 uncertain terms ↓
- sza3-ge pa3-da — 'Chosen by/from the heart' — a technical term for specially selected animals, likely of cultic quality. The precise nuance (selected by oracle, by inspection, or for a specific ritual purpose) is debated.
- UD-ḪUB₂ — Reading uncertain (marked # in transliteration). Possibly a personal name, a place, or a cultic designation. Cannot be confirmed from the photograph at this resolution.
- masz#? szu-gi4-gi4 — Both signs marked uncertain. 'szu-gi4-gi4' can mean 'returned,' 'replaced,' or 'given back.' If 'masz' is correct, it may indicate a goat rather than a sheep, complicating the total count; alternatively it may be a verb or qualifier. The '#?' notation in the transliteration signals low confidence.
- zi-ga — 'Expended' / 'issued' / 'disbursed' — standard Sumerian administrative term for goods officially removed from store. Rendered 'expended' here following conventional practice.
- [1(u@c)] 1(asz@c) — The ten-unit sign is restored in brackets (broken). The total '14 sheep, 9 (= 10 minus 1) lambs' depends on this restoration; it is standard in Umma administrative arithmetic but cannot be independently verified from the photograph.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a small, roughly square clay tablet in two views (obverse and reverse/case), plus what appear to be edge views on the left and right — this looks like an envelope-and-tablet combination or a tablet with a clay case. The museum accession number 'AO 19721' is painted in blue ink on the reverse/case, confirming the catalog identification. The obverse carries several lines of cuneiform; individual wedges are visible but resolution makes sign-by-sign confirmation difficult. The uppermost lines are somewhat eroded and the surface shows some wear and a dark discolouration patch mid-tablet consistent with the '#' uncertain markers in the transliteration. The final few lines on the lower portion (reverse) show horizontal ruling and what appear to be numerical and sign groupings consistent with a summary line. I can broadly confirm the layout — numerical signs at the left margin, text to the right — and the summary/total structure matches the transliteration's 'szunigin' and 'zi-ga' lines. Specific sign readings such as 'masz#? szu-gi4#-gi4' and 'UD#-HUB2#' cannot be individually verified from the photo at this resolution; the '#' flags in the transliteration are accepted on scholarly authority. The Umma provenance and Akkadian period dating are consistent with this type of livestock-disbursement administrative document.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 12, 2026 · 2878 in / 1044 out tokens
Transliteration
2(asz@c) udu# sza3-ge pa3-da 1(asz@c) sila4 za3 UD#-HUB2# 1(asz@c) sila4 dumu-zi 1(asz@c) sila4 lugal-pa-e3 1(asz@c) udu muhaldim 5(asz@c) sila4 ab-zu [1(u@c)] 1(asz@c) udu masz#? szu-gi4#-gi4 szunigin 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) udu 1(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) sila4 zi-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — AAS 012. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P212448) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.