Position in chronology
CDLI Literary 006205, ex. 010
About this tablet
A small clay fragment from Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, written around 2600–2500 BCE — the era of the very first literary texts in human history. What survives is a run of negative statements: something 'has no place,' something 'has not,' no ghee, no fish-roe. Fara literary tablets of this type are notoriously compressed — the scribes wrote signs in boxes without spelling out grammar — so the sense is hard to pin down, but the drumbeat of negations points toward a wisdom composition or a lament cataloguing what is lacking. Most of the tablet is lost; the museum's ink number, 33-59-65, is still visible on the blank back.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The readable part is a string of denials. A she-goat is mentioned, then: it has no place; something to do with flax, and again — he does not have it; Šubur, and again — he does not have it. Then: no ghee, no [that commodity], no fish roe. Three or four further lines survive only as isolated signs before the surface breaks off entirely. Whatever list or lament this was, we have only its middle stretch, and the back of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] she-goat, LAK20 [...] 2. [...] has no place 3. [...] ... the place of flax(?) [...] LUM — he/it has not 4. [...] Šubur [...] MAR — he/it has not 5. [... ...] ... 6. no ghee(?) 7. |LAGAB×(AŠ@c×AŠ.AŠ@c×AŠ)| — not 8. fish-roe — not 9. LI TAR [...] 10. ... [...] 11. KU [... ...] (The remainder of the surface is broken away; the reverse carries no legible writing.)
Our translation engine — Opus 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.
Engine notes
read from photo8 uncertain terms ↓
- LAK20 — A sign number in the Fara-period sign list (Deimel's LAK); the precise phonetic or semantic value in this context is uncertain. It may function as a determinative or commodity classifier.
- nu-tuku — Literally 'not have' or 'has none' in Sumerian (nu = negation; tuku = to have/possess). In administrative lists it typically records absence of a commodity or person. The formula is standard in Fara-period texts.
- gara₂ — Possibly a dairy product (cream, ghee, or clarified butter in later Sumerian); the reading is marked uncertain (?) in the transliteration. Alternative readings of the sign are possible.
- |LAGABx(AŠ@cxAŠ.AŠ@cxAŠ)| — A complex compound sign in the Fara corpus; its commodity or administrative referent is not firmly established. The pipe notation indicates a composite grapheme.
- nunuz ku6 — 'Eggs of fish' — a commodity entry. 'nunuz' = egg(s); 'ku6' = fish. Attested in Fara administrative lists as a foodstuff category, but context here is fragmentary.
- SZUBUR / ŠUBUR — Can mean 'servant' or 'slave' (later Sumerian šubur), or refer to the region/people of Subir/Subartu (northern Mesopotamia). In administrative texts it may denote a category of dependent worker or an ethnic label for a person.
- MAR — Logogram of uncertain referent in Early Dynastic administrative texts; possibly related to a region (Martu/Amorites) or a commodity. Reading and meaning in this line are unresolved.
- LUM, LI, TAR, KU — These sign readings in the lower damaged lines are conventional transliteration of visible signs but their lexical values and syntactic roles in this fragmentary passage cannot be determined with confidence.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows three views of the same tablet fragment: the obverse (middle image, bearing cuneiform), the reverse (bottom image, uninscribed or very lightly marked, with a modern museum ink label reading 'UM 33-59-065'), and a fragmentary edge piece at the top. The obverse surface is reddish-buff clay, lightly fired, with a diagonal crack running across the upper portion. The wedge impressions are shallow but partially legible under the oblique lighting. On the obverse I can confirm multiple horizontal ruled lines dividing the tablet into registers; in the upper registers I can discern signs consistent with UD5/UZ (goat sign, pictographic), and a cluster of signs in the top right that align with the LAK20 reading in the transliteration. The repeated vertical stroke groups and the triangular 'star'-like cluster in the middle registers are consistent with the negation sign NU and the compound signs noted. The fish-egg compound (nunuz ku6) in the lower registers is not clearly resolvable in this photograph due to surface erosion, but the general layout matches. The compound |LAGABx(AŠ@cxAŠ.AŠ@cxAŠ)| is a complex sign I cannot independently confirm from the photo at this resolution. The bottom portion of the tablet is broken away, accounting for the lacunae in the final lines. The transliteration is consistent with the Fara period 'nu-tuku' list genre; the glossary and CDLI catalog entry support this assignment. Confidence is low due to the fragmentary state, shallow wedges, and inability to verify several compound signs directly from the photograph.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 16, 2026 · 1504 in / 1341 out tokens
Transliteration
[x] ud5# LAK20# [x] ki#? nu-tuku [x] x# ki gu [x] LUM# nu-tuku [x] szubur [x] MAR nu-tuku [x x] x nu# gara2? |LAGABx(ASZ@cxASZ.ASZ@cxASZ)| nu nunuz ku6 nu LI TAR [x] x [x] KU [x x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — CDLI Literary 006205, ex. 010. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey (P010537) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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