Position in chronology
OIP 014, 058
About this tablet
This small clay tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya) in southern Iraq belongs to the Early Dynastic period, roughly the mid-third millennium BCE — among the oldest surviving administrative documents anywhere. It is a labor account: a scribe tallied hired workers (lu2 hun-ga2) and household servants (ARAD2) by the day, apparently tracking how many were engaged on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 6th days of some work cycle. Such texts are the bookkeeping backbone of early Mesopotamian institutions — temple or palace households paying out wages or rations for day labor, centuries before any comparable payroll record survives from elsewhere in the world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a workforce tally. On the first day, 5 men were taken on as hired labor. There's a name or notation — 'ga'ar-DU-NI-su' — that may mark a person or a batch of goods tied to the entry, though its exact sense is lost to us. On the sixth day, 1 hired man worked. On the third day, 10 men worked (recorded as '20 minus 10'). On the second day, 1 man worked. Nine servants of the household are also counted ('10 minus 1'). The account closes with a large total: 80 hired men in all ('60 plus 20', the 60 restored from a break). The tablet is a running day-by-day count of paid and household labor.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5(disz) hired men (lu2 hun-ga2) 1st day. ga'ar-DU-NI-su (personal name / entry designation). 1 hired man (lu2 hun-ga2) 6th day. 20 minus 10 (= 10) — 3rd day. 1 — 2nd day. 10 minus 1 (= 9) — servants (ARAD2 ARAD2). [60] (plus) 20 hired men (lu2 hun-ga2).
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
5(asz@c) lu2 hun-ga2 u4 1(disz@t)-kam ga'ar-DU-NI-su 1(asz@c) lu2 hun-ga2 u4 6(disz@t)-kam 2(u@c) la2 1(u@c) u4 3(disz@t)-kam 1(asz@c) u4 2(disz@t)-kam 1(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) ARAD2 ARAD2 [1(gesz2@c)] 2(u@c) lu2 hun-ga2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — OIP 014, 058. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P222245) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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