Position in chronology
WF 122
About this tablet
A small clay tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, in southern Iraq), written around 2500 BCE. It is a work roster: ten men listed one by one, each preceded by the numeral '1', and divided into two squads headed by two supervisors, Nin-ursag — explicitly called the overseer (ugula) — and Utu-ursag. Documents like this are the ordinary bookkeeping of an Early Dynastic city's institutions, tracking who was mustered for labour, rations, or a work detail. The names are wholly ordinary Sumerian ones — 'Father', 'Sun-god-is-my-...', 'Truly-a-man' — and give us a rare, plain glimpse of the working population of one of Sumer's oldest cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A staff list of ten men in two teams. Team one: Amar-PA, Il-lu-sar, Nin-ukken-a, Lu-lu (whose entry continues into a damaged patch), and Dingir-šeš-mu — five men, reporting to the foreman Nin-ursag. Team two: Ad-da, Mes-[...], Lu-nanam, Utu-amu, and Na-ni — five men under Utu-ursag. Each man is counted individually with a single tally mark; the tablet gives no total and no indication of what work or rations were involved, and one name in the second group is broken away in the middle.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (person): Amar-PA; 1 (person): Il-lu-sar; 1 (person): Nin-ukken-a; 1 (person): Lu-lu, [...](-[...]) [...]; 1 (person): Dingir-šeš-mu. (Under) Nin-ursag, the overseer (ugula). 1 (person): Ad-da; 1 (person): Mes-[...]-[...]; 1 (person): Lu-nanam; 1 (person): Utu-amu; 1 (person): Na-ni. (Under) Utu-ursag.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz@c) amar-PA 1(asz@c) il-lu-sar 1(asz@c) nin-ukken-a# 1(asz@c) lu-lu! x(-x) [(...)] 1(asz@c) dingir-szesz-mu nin-ur-sag ugula 1(asz@c) ad-da 1(asz@c) mes-[x]-x 1(asz@c) lu2-na-nam 1(asz@c) utu-a-mu 1(asz@c) na-ni utu-ur-sag
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 122. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011080) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.