Position in chronology
FTP 037
About this tablet
An administrative ration or disbursement record from Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2600–2500 BCE in the Early Dynastic period. A scribe listed out measured amounts of barley and coarse flour issued to named individuals — among them a cupbearer, a man called Lu-ezen ('man of the festival'), and one Ama-abzu-si. It is a small piece of the vast bookkeeping apparatus of one of Sumer's earliest city administrations, from the very city where Mesopotamian tradition located the Flood hero.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short distribution list. Someone whose name is partly lost — perhaps Ša-gigir, the cupbearer — received about one barig (roughly 60 liters) of barley. Gešgal-si got two barig; another entry names a person written GAM-GAM. Lu-ezen received one barig of coarse barley flour. A damaged stretch follows, and then the final legible entry: three barig of barley for Ama-abzu-si. The everyday grain accounting of a Sumerian city office, some 4,500 years ago.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] 1 barig(?) of barley — Ša-gigir(?), the cupbearer. 2 barig — Gešgal-si. GAM-GAM. 1 barig(?) of dabin-flour — Lu-ezen. (Break) 3 barig of barley — Ama-abzu-si. (reverse uninscribed/eroded)
Our translation engine — Fable 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
[x] 1(barig@c)#? sze sza3-gigir? sagi 2(barig@c) geszgal-si GAM-GAM 1(barig@c)#? dabin# lu2-ezen# [...] 3(barig@c) sze ama-abzu-si
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 037. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P222112) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.