Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 181
About this tablet
A small bun-shaped clay tablet from Adab in southern Iraq, written roughly 2400 BCE, recording the handover of sheep. A man named Nani receives two separate lots of rams, apparently as provisions for a journey or official trip, and three men — Utu-tešmu, É-dumu, and Di-Utu, the last of them an overseer — are named as the responsible parties. The scribe closed the record with the month name, the barley harvest, which was how Sumerian accountants dated their books. It is a single page from the livestock ledger of an Early Dynastic estate: nothing dramatic, but exactly the kind of routine note that made an administered economy possible.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Sheep issued to Nani: one lot of rams, handed over; a second lot of three rams, handed over. Both are charged to travel provisions. Responsible: Utu-tešmu, É-dumu, and Di-Utu, the overseer. Dated to the month of the barley harvest. The back of the tablet was left blank — the only writing on it is a modern collection number.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] ram(s) — Nani — were given to him. 3 ram(s) — Nani — were given to him. (for) the journey (gìri-gen-na). Utu-tešmu, É-dumu, Di-Utu the overseer (nu-banda). Month: “Harvesting of the barley.”
Our translation engine — Opus 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.
Engine notes
read from photo6 uncertain terms ↓
- an-na-šum₂ — Literally 'was given to him/her from above' or simply 'was given'; the passive/allocative construction is standard in ED administrative texts but the exact syntactic force (gift, ration, disbursement) is context-dependent.
- giri₃-gen-na — Literally 'established/regular foot/road'; interpreted as 'via the regular/authorized route,' referring to the standard delivery pathway. Could alternatively denote a personal name element or a formulaic term of authorization.
- e₂-dumu — 'House of the son'; this could refer to a specific institutional household (e.g., the heir's household of a temple or palace), or possibly a personal name component. The exact institutional referent at Adab is uncertain.
- utu-tešmu — Personal name, literally 'Utu is (my/our) pride/equal'; tešmu (or tèš-mu) may mean 'pride,' 'dignity,' or 'equal.' The precise reading and etymology are debated.
- iti še-saĝ-ku₅ — Month name meaning approximately 'month of the prime barley cutting (harvest)'; attestation varies slightly across Early Dynastic calendars and the exact month number within the Adab calendar is not firmly established.
- [n] udu-nita — The number of male sheep in the first entry is broken/missing in the transliteration. The parallel second entry records 3, so the first may also be a small number, but this is speculative.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a small lenticular (lens-shaped) clay tablet, typical of Early Dynastic administrative documents from Adab. The obverse (main face) carries clearly incised cuneiform wedges arranged in horizontal registers separated by ruled lines; the signs are reasonably crisp despite some surface cracking visible across the center of the tablet. The reverse (bottom image) is largely uninscribed, consistent with short administrative texts of this period, and carries the modern museum ink notation 'MS 3790/37'. The edge views show additional signs on the left and right edges, which align with the transliteration's continuation of text around the tablet's rim — consistent with the iti (month) formula visible on the edge. Visual reading confirms the general structure: repeated entries with numeric notation (the 3-fold aš sign for '3' is visible), followed by sign clusters consistent with udu-nita (male sheep), personal name signs, and the an-na-šum₂ (was given) formula. The giri₃-gen-na (via the established/regular road) phrase on the lower obverse is partially legible. Nu-banda₃ (overseer) on the lower portion aligns with visible sign groupings. The month name iti še-saĝ-ku₅ (month of cutting the prime barley) is partially broken at the tablet's edge, consistent with the transliteration's bracket. Photo resolution is sufficient to confirm the general sign layout but not every individual sign — particularly the damaged upper-left and the edge text. The transliteration and photo are broadly in agreement; no significant discrepancies detected.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 16, 2026 · 2229 in / 1113 out tokens
Transliteration
[n] udu#-nita# na-ni an-na-szum2 3(asz@c) udu-nita na-ni an-na-szum2 giri3-gen-na utu-tesz2-mu e2-dumu di-utu nu-banda3 iti sze-sag11#-ku5-[kam]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 181. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252760) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.