Position in chronology
WF 101
About this tablet
An administrative ration account from Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), written around 2600 BCE in the Early Dynastic period. City officials are recording food — and a small quantity of fine oil — issued to two very large groups of men: 670 laborers or conscripts headed to battle, and 1,612 men connected with the city assembly. It is a rare glimpse of a Sumerian city-state mobilizing manpower on a mass scale, with the bureaucracy counting every mouth to be fed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a provisioning ledger. Six hundred and seventy able-bodied men deployed for battle drew food rations, and another one thousand six hundred and twelve men attached to the assembly drew food rations as well. The account closes by noting an issue of fine oil. In modern terms: the city fed a battle contingent of 670 and an assembly levy of 1,612, and supplied oil on top — a quartermaster's tally of over two thousand men on the books.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine670 workmen going to battle (me₃ du), — food (rations consumed); 1,612 workmen (of) the assembly (ukken) — food (rations consumed); fine oil (i₃-šeš₄).
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(gesz'u@c) 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) gurusz me3 du nig2-gu7 2(gesz'u@c) 6(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) 2(asz@c) gurusz ukken nig2-gu7 i3 szesz4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 101. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011059) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.