Position in chronology
FTP 105
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from the city of Šuruppak (modern Fara, Iraq), written around 2500 BCE — one of the oldest bureaucratic archives in the world. It records measured amounts of dairy fats — ghee, cheese, and oil — allotted to a series of gods and cult figures, among them Enki, Lugal-Meslam, Ninkur, Numušda, and Nin-mešudu, with a herdsman named Di-Utu responsible for the goods. It is a snapshot of how a Sumerian temple economy fed its gods: divine offerings tracked with the same careful arithmetic as any warehouse ledger.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A delivery ledger for temple offerings: about 2 sila of clarified butter and 3 sila of pressed cheese go to Enki; 3 gur and 3 barig of oil, measured out in sila, go to Lugal-Meslam. After a gap, the list continues: an allotment for the deity AN-AN; 2 gur 2 barig each for Ninkur, Numušda, and Nin-PA-unken-gal — all handled by Di-Utu, the herdsman; then 3 gur 3 barig for Nin-mešudu, and roughly the same for two more recipients whose names are broken away. The reverse of the tablet is blank, and the end of the list is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] 2? sila of ghee (clarified butter), 3 sila of šu-tag cheese — (for) Enki. 3 (gur) 3 barig of oil, in sila-measure — (for) Lugal-Meslam. (Break) — (for) AN-AN. 2 (gur) 2 barig — (for) Ninkur. 2 (gur) 2 barig — (for) Numušda. 2 (gur) 2 barig — (for) Nin-PA-unken-gal. Di-Utu, the herdsman. 3 (gur) 3 barig — (for) Nin-mešu[du]. 3? (gur) [x] — (for) Nin-[...]. 3? (gur) [... ...] (remainder lost; reverse uninscribed)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[x] 2(asz@c)#? sila3 i3-nun 3(asz@c) sila3 ga szu-tag en-ki 3(asz@c) 3(barig@c) i3 sila3 lugal-mes-lam [...] AN-AN 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) nin-kur 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) nu-musz-da 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) nin-PA-unken-gal di-utu na-gada 3(asz@c) 3(barig@c) nin#-me-szu-[du7] 3(asz@c)#? [x] nin#-[x] 3(asz@c)#? [x x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 105. 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 (P222172) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.