Position in chronology
BE 04, 238
About this tablet
A fragment from Kassite-period Babylonia (roughly the fourteenth–twelfth centuries BCE) preserving what is almost certainly the witness list at the end of a legal or administrative document. Each man is named with his father and his office — and these are not minor figures: a vizier, a governor, and a district governor appear in sequence. The presence of such high state officials suggests the lost transaction was an important one, and the list gives us a snapshot of the upper administrative hierarchy of Babylonia under the Kassite kings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is the sign-off section of an official document — the roster of the men who stood witness. First, Ṭāb-ašāb-Marduk, son of Ina-Esagil-zēri, the vizier. Then Arad-Nanâ, son of Damiq-Adad, the governor. Then a man whose name ends in '-zēri,' son of Arad-Ea, the district governor. A fourth witness, son of Namri, follows, but his own name is broken away. The final readable line mentions 'utensils' or furnishings — perhaps part of the property at issue — before the tablet breaks off entirely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineṬāb-ašāb-Marduk, son of Ina-Esagil-zēri, the [vizier]; Arad-Nanâ, son of Damiq-Adad, the governor (šakin ṭēmi); [...]-zēri, son of Arad-Ea, the district [governor] (bēl pīḫati); [...], son of Nam[ri]; [...] the utensils.
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
du10#-ga#-a#-szab#-marduk _dumu_ ina-e2-sag-il3-numun _lu2 [sukkal]_ ir3#-na#-[na]-a _dumu_ saga-iq-iszkur _gar_ t,e3-[me] [x-x-x] _numun# dumu_ ir3-e2-a _en [nam_] [...] _dumu_ nam-[ri] [...] u2-na-a-[ti]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Middle Babylonian (ca. 1400-1100 BC)) — BE 04, 238. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: WAM 21.0010 (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, USA) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.earth/artifacts, P272831). 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.
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.