Position in chronology
WF 010
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from the Sumerian city of Šuruppak (modern Fara), written around 2600 BCE — among the oldest administrative archives in the world. A scribe records small herds of donkeys of particular categories charged to three named men: NE-lum, Lu-mu-e, and Lumma. The reverse carries the running total, sixteen animals, showing that double-entry-style checking of sums was already routine practice a full millennium before Hammurabi.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a livestock ledger. Three men are each responsible for a group of donkeys of a special grade: NE-lum has 2 of the 'yellow-green' ŠUL-ŠUL type, Lu-mu-e has 9 of the ŠUL type, and Lumma has 5 of the ŠUL-ŠUL type. On the back, the clerk adds it up: 16 donkeys in all — and indeed 2 + 9 + 5 = 16. Nothing else is written; the rest of the tablet was left blank once the account was closed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 2 yellow-green (sig7) ŠUL-ŠUL donkeys — NE-lum; 9 ŠUL donkeys — Lu-mu-e; 5 ŠUL-ŠUL (donkeys) — Lumma. (Reverse) Total: 16 ŠUL-ŠUL (donkeys).
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
2(asz@c) ansze-sig7-SZUL-SZUL NE-lumx(LAK218) 9(asz@c) ansze-SZUL lu2-mu-e3 5(asz@c) SZUL-SZUL lum-ma 1(u@c) 6(asz@c) SZUL-SZUL
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 010. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P010967) — 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.