Position in chronology
SF 025
About this tablet
A fragment of a list of Sumerian personal names from Šuruppak (modern Fara), written around 2600 BCE in the Early Dynastic period — one of the oldest scribal-school archives known. Lists like this were copied by apprentice scribes to practice writing the names they would meet daily in administrative work; some of the same name-lists were copied for centuries across different cities. Not a story or a contract, but a building block of literacy itself: rows of names such as Ur-Inanna ('servant of Inanna') and Ur-Nisaba ('servant of Nisaba', the goddess of writing).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is simply a roster of people's names, one per box: Ur-Inanna, Kulili, Sidu, a name written with a rare compound sign, Mes-abzu, Ur-Nisaba, Mes-pa, and probably Zulalum, followed by two names too damaged to read in full — one beginning with the element 'woman' (Munus-...), another with Nu-. The top of the list and everything after these entries is lost, and the back of the tablet is worn blank. There are no quantities or verbs — it reads like a class list or a name-writing exercise from a scribal school.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, single preserved column) [...] ... (traces) Ur-Inanna Kulili Sidu A(?)-...-NE (name written with the compound sign SAG×HA; reading uncertain) Mes-abzu Ur-Nisaba Mes-pa Zulalum(?) Munus-[...] (name broken) Nu-... [...] (name broken) ... (traces; remainder lost)
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
[...] x ur-inanna ku-li-li si-du3 A#?-|SAGxHA|-NE mes-abzu ur-nisaba# mes-pa3 zu2#-[la2?]-lum munus-[x (x)] nu#-x [(x)] x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — SF 025. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P010603) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.