Position in chronology
WF 090
About this tablet
An administrative grain-distribution record from ancient Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), dated to roughly 2600–2500 BCE. It tracks allocations of barley — measured in large capacity units called gur-mah and the smaller barig — going out to a small group of named individuals, including a woman bearing the occupational title 'Vine-Woman' (munus-geštin) and two men, A-pa-e and An-dab-si. The herdsman (na-gada) named at the close was the accountable official who certified the transaction, a standard closing formula in Fara administrative tablets. Several entries in the middle are too damaged to read, but the preserved portions give a clear picture of routine, institutional rationing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One and a half gur-mah of barley — several hundred liters — is assigned to Vine-Woman. Six barig go to A-pa-e. Two barig (possibly) go to An-dab-si. Several more entries follow, but the clay is too damaged to read in full: one seems to record a gur-mah-scale allocation for a man whose name includes the element Bil-a-nu-kuz, and another may record a portion for someone called 'the father.' The herdsman is noted at the end as the responsible official who authorized these distributions.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1½ gur-mah of barley — [for] Munus-geštin ('Vine-Woman'); 6 barig [for] A-pa-e; [...] 2 barig(?) [for] An-dab-[si]; x [...]; 1 gur-mah(?) x-[...]; [n gur-mah for] Bil-a-nu-kuz; 1 gur-mah(?) [for] Ad-[da?]; [...] x; [responsible official:] the herdsman (na-gada).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) sze gur-mah munus-gesztin 6(barig@c) a-pa-e3 [...] 2(barig@c)#? an-dab6-[si] x [...] 1(asz@c)? x-[...] [n(asz@c)] bilx(|GESZ.PAP.NE|)#-a2-nu-kusz2 1(asz@c)#? ad-[da?] [...] x na-gada
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 090. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011047) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.