Position in chronology
WF 109
About this tablet
A roster of ten men from the city of Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2600–2500 BCE — the era of the city archives that make Šuruppak one of the best-documented places of the Early Dynastic world. Each line counts one person by name: Ur-Utu ('servant of the sun-god'), Amar-edin ('calf of the steppe'), En-abzu-mud, and others. Such head-counts were the basic paperwork of institutional labor management, tallying workers, dependents, or ration recipients under a central household. It is a small window onto real, named individuals living almost 4,600 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a simple headcount — a list of ten men, one tally mark apiece: Ur-Utu, Lu-lal, E-munus, E-na-lulu, En-kas, En-abzu-mud, E-šeš, Amar-edin, Lamma, and Lu-siki-UŠ-AK. If written today it would be an attendance sheet or payroll roster: ten names checked off, one by one, by an administrator keeping track of personnel. The back of the tablet was left blank; no totals, purpose, or date are recorded on what survives.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [1] Ur-Utu [1] Lu-lal 1 E-munus 1 E-na-lulu 1 En-kas 1 En-abzu-mud 1 E-šeš 1 Amar-edin 1 Lamma 1 Lu-siki-UŠ-AK (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
[1(disz)] ur-utu [1(disz)] lu2-lal2 1(disz) e2#-munus 1(disz) e2#-na-lu-lu 1(disz) en-kas4# 1(disz) en-abzu-mud 1(disz) e2-szesz 1(disz) amar-edin 1(disz) lam-ma 1(disz) lu2-siki-USZ-AK
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 109. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011067) — 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.