Position in chronology
WF 093
About this tablet
A workforce roster from the city of Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), written around 2500 BCE — one of the oldest large-scale labor censuses in existence. An administrator counted 1,532 male laborers, 39 builders' sons, and 41 women, totalled them correctly to 1,612 'people who eat food,' i.e. mouths the institution must feed. A final note records 47 men sent off to the city of Kish. It is a striking glimpse of how early a Mesopotamian city could mobilize and account for well over a thousand workers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Payroll headcount: 1,532 adult male workers, 39 boys attached to the construction crews, and 41 women — a grand total of 1,612 people on the ration rolls, everyone the administration is feeding. Separately noted: 47 men have gone off to Kish. The bookkeeping checks out exactly — 1,532 + 39 + 41 = 1,612 — so this was a careful accountant tallying his labor force and the mouths it represented.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 1,532 able-bodied male workers (guruš), 40 minus 1 (= 39) sons of the builders, 41 female workers (geme), (reverse) grand total: 1,612 persons who consume food (ration recipients). 50 minus 3 (= 47) men gone to Kish.
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
2(gesz'u@c) 5(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) 2(asz@c) gurusz 4(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) dumu-dumu szitim 4(u@c) 1(asz@c) geme2 an-sze3-gu2 2(gesz'u@c) 6(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) 2(asz@c) lu2 nig2-gu7 5(u@c) la2 3(asz@c) lu2# kisz DU
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 093. 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 (P011050) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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