Position in chronology
FTP 067
About this tablet
A small bun-shaped clay tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2500 BCE. It is a short ration or disbursement list: quantities of beer (and grain measured by the same standards) allotted to five named individuals, among them a woman or lady called Nin-ig-gal and a man whose name invokes the god Enlil. Documents like this are the routine bookkeeping of an Early Dynastic temple or palace household, and they are among our earliest records of ordinary people's names.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A beer distribution record. The first allocation is one gur and three barig of beer, reckoned in sila measure, issued to Ur-ni. Then: one gur to U-KA, two barig to E-urbidu, one barig to Nin-iggal, and one gur to Enlil-amah. Nothing more is written — no date, no official's seal, just the amounts and the names of the people who received them.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (gur) 3 barig of beer, (measured) in sila — (for) Ur-ni; 1 (gur) — U₂-KA; 2 barig — E₂-ur₂-bi-du₁₀; 1 barig — Nin-ig-gal; 1 (gur) — Enlil-a₂-mah.
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) 3(barig@c) kasz sila3 ur2-ni 1(asz@c) u2-KA 2(barig@c) e2-ur2-bi-du10 1(barig@c) nin-ig-gal 1(asz@c) en-lil2-a2-mah
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 067. 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 (P222143) — 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.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.