Position in chronology
WF 055
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from the city of Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2500 BCE — the same city Mesopotamian legend named as the home of the flood hero. Temple or palace clerks here tracked barley set aside as seed grain for the coming planting season, noting the storehouses it came from and the area of land it was meant to sow: over 37 bur, roughly 240 hectares of fields. It is a snapshot of large-scale, centrally managed agriculture at the very dawn of bureaucracy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The account reads: eleven large-measure gur and two barig of barley from the main granary; six gur of barley; three and a half gur and two barig from the (smaller) storehouse, under Gur-gur — all of it seed barley, designated for the 'upper bank' area. The reverse gives the totals: twenty-one large-measure gur of barley as seed grain, enough to sow a tract of 37 bur, 1 eše and 3 iku of farmland — on the order of 240 hectares. In short, a seed-grain requisition sheet matching grain issued from storehouses to the acreage it was expected to plant.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 11 gur-mah (and) 2 barig of barley — great storehouse (ganun-mah); 6 gur of barley; 3 1/2 gur (and) 2 barig — storehouse (ganun); Gur-gur; seed barley; An-še-gu (the "upper bank"?). Reverse: 21 gur-mah of barley, seed barley; 37 bur, 1 eše, 3 iku (of field).
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(u@c) 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gur-mah ganun-mah 6(asz@c) sze gur 3(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ganun gur2-gur2 sze-numun an-sze3-gu2 2(u@c) 1(asz@c) sze gur-mah sze-numun 3(bur'u@c) 7(bur3@c) 1(esze3@c) 3(iku@c)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 055. 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: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011012) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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