Position in chronology
WF 085
About this tablet
A barley account from the city of Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2600 BCE in the Early Dynastic period. A scribe tallies very large quantities of grain — hundreds of 'great gur' measures — against named individuals such as Lugal-amah and Sud-anzu and an institution called the E-KA-nun. Tablets like this are among the earliest bookkeeping documents of an urban grain economy, showing a city administration moving harvests on a massive scale.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. Lugal-amah is down for 177 large gur-measures of barley. The E-KA-nun storehouse accounts for 108. Another entry lists 87 and a half; Si-du has 36 and a half. Then come 239 large gur, followed by 51 and a half gur plus one barig of barley measured in a different-sized gur. The final line books 408 gur of barley under the name Sud-anzu — likely the running total or the largest single account. Plain warehouse arithmetic, five thousand years old.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 sixties less 3 (= 177) gur-mah of barley — Lugal-a-mah; 1 sixty (and) 50 less 2 (= 108) — (for/of) the E-KA-nun (storehouse); 1 sixty (and) 27 and a half (= 87½); 36 and a half — Si-du; 4 sixties less 1 (= 239) gur-mah; 51 and a half (gur) 1 barig of barley, in gur of 2 (units); 6 sixties (and) 50 less 2 (= 408) gur of barley — Sud-anzu.
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
3(gesz2@c) la2 3(asz@c) sze gur-mah lugal-a2#?-mah! 1(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) e2-KA-nun 1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 7(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) 3(u@c) 6(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) si-du3 4(gesz2@c) la2 1(asz@c) gur-mah 5(u@c) 1(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze# gur 2(asz@c) 6(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) sze gur sud3-anzux(MI)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 085. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011042) — 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.