Position in chronology
WF 080
About this tablet
An administrative barley account from Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2600 BCE — among the earliest substantial archives of economic record-keeping anywhere. A scribe lists measured amounts of barley against eight named individuals, probably rations or allotments issued by a central household. Tablets like this show a city already running on written accounting a millennium before the better-known empires of Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a barley distribution ledger. En-hegal gets the largest share — five full units and three barig measured out by the standard lidga container. Me-pa'e receives two units and two barig, and the same amount goes jointly to Pa-ningal and Me-me. Four men — Bil-anu-kush, Adda, AN-nume, and Amar-Isin — each receive one unit. The back of the tablet is blank; the whole account fits on the front.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 5 (gur?) 3 barig of barley, (measured) by the lidga — En-hegal; 2 (and) 2 barig(?) — Me-pa'e; 1 — Bil-anu-kush; 1 — Adda; 2 (and) 2 barig — Pa-ningal (and) Me-me; 1 — AN-nume; 1 — Amar-Isin. (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
5(asz@c) 3(barig@c) sze lid2-ga en-he2-gal2 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c)? me-pa-e3 1(asz@c) bilx(|PAP.GESZ.BIL|)-a2-nu-kusz2 1(asz@c) ad-da 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) pa4-nin-gal me-me 1(asz@c) AN-nu-me 1(asz@c) amar-isinx(IN)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 080. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011037) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.