Position in chronology
FTP 058
About this tablet
A small, bun-shaped clay tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written roughly 2600–2500 BCE. It is a flour account: measured amounts of coarse barley flour issued to a group of women workers and to an institutional household, with a further consignment coming from a place or depot called Za-sud, all booked under an official named Ur-Inanna. Texts like this are the routine bookkeeping of one of the earliest large temple-and-palace economies, showing how grain was milled, measured in lidga and barig units, and handed out to dependent labour.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Flour account: 4 lidga and 1 barig of coarse barley flour for the women's work-gang; a further issue of flour to the AB household; 3 barig of flour; and 20 lidga of flour received from Za-sud. The whole transaction is booked under the official Ur-Inanna. The tablet is cracked across the middle and several signs are worn, so some entries cannot be read with certainty.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 (lidga) 1 barig of semolina flour, (in) lidga-measure; for the munus-a₂-nu-kuš₂ (the female workers / "women who do not rest"); semolina flour for the AB (institution); 3 barig of semolina flour; 20 (lidga) of semolina flour, (in) lidga-measure; from Za-sud; (under) Ur-Inanna.
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
4(asz@c) 1(barig@c) dabin lid2-ga# munus-a2-nu#-kusz2 dabin AB 3(barig@c) dabin# 2(u@c) dabin lid2-ga# za3-sud3-ta ur-inanna
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 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: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P222133) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
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