Position in chronology
SF 004
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative personnel roster from Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2600 BCE — among the earliest substantial archives of Sumerian writing. Each line counts one person by name; several names beginning with 'Nin-' suggest women may be among those listed. Tablets like this were the working paperwork of the city's institutions, tracking workers, dependents, or ration recipients, and they give us some of the oldest recorded personal names in history.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a head-count list, one person per line: Nin-tinuga, Nin-nigar, someone whose name begins AMA- and ends -GAN, a name now lost, Nam-a-(something), Nam-nun, E-gal-še, KISAL-si, En-zida, and Amar-MI-ZA. Each entry is preceded by the tally mark for 'one'. The edges of the tablet are broken away, so more names originally stood before and after these; the back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 1 (person): Nin-tinuga [1 (person):] Nin-nigar [1 (person):] AMA-[...]-GAN [... (name lost)] [1 (person):] Nam-a-[...] [1 (person):] Nam-nun 1 (person): E-gal-še 1 (person): KISAL-si 1 (person): En-zida 1 (person): Amar-MI-ZA [... (remainder broken)] (reverse uninscribed)
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
1(asz@c) nin-tin-ug5#-ga [1(asz@c) ]nin-nigar# [1(asz@c) ]AMA-[(x)]-GAN [...]-x [1(asz@c) ]nam2#?-a?-[x-(x)] [1(asz@c)] nam2-nun 1(asz@c) e2-gal#-sze3 1(asz@c) KISAL-si 1(asz@c) en-zi-da 1(asz@c) amar-MI-ZA [...]-x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — SF 004. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P010569) — 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.