Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 269
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic clay tablet from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), roughly the size of a large pebble, listing men by name with their occupations — a fisherman, a cupbearer, a ploughman — each entered with a single unit-mark, probably a ration, an allotment, or a head-count of workers attached to a household. The last two names, An-ne-šum and Beli-dug, are written without a number: Beli-dug is a Semitic (Akkadian) name, a reminder that Sumerian and Semitic speakers worked side by side in the same institutions. It is unremarkable bookkeeping, which is exactly what makes it valuable: an ordinary snapshot of who was on the books of an Adab estate around the middle of the third millennium BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A short staff or ration list: one entry each for Ur-e, Lugal-sisa the fisherman, Enlila the cup-bearer, Dudu together with Ur-lu the ploughman, and Ur-nin-[...] with Ur-e-iginim. Two further names, An-ne-šum and Beli-dug, close the list without a quantity beside them — perhaps the men who supervised the disbursement or received it on behalf of the rest. The right edge of the tablet is chipped and one personal name is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (unit): Ur-e, Lugal-sisa, the fisherman; 1 (unit): Enlila, the cupbearer; 1 (unit): Dudu, (and) Ur-lu, the ploughman; 1 (unit): Ur-nin-[...], Ur-e-iginim; An-ne-šum, Beli-dug.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz@c) ur-e2 lugal-si-sa2# szu-ku6# 1(asz@c) en-lil2-la2 sagi# 1(asz@c) du-du ur-lu2 engar# 1(asz@c) ur-nin-[x] ur-e2-igi-nim an-ne-szum2 be-li2-du10
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC) ?) — CUSAS 35, 269. 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: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P254032) — 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
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