Position in chronology
AAS 012
About this tablet
A small sealed clay tablet from Umma in southern Iraq, written under the Akkadian kings (roughly 2300–2150 BCE), recording sheep and lambs handed out from an institutional flock. Some animals are set aside as "chosen" offering beasts, others are assigned to the gods Dumuzi and Lugal-pa'e, to the sanctuary called the Abzu, and one simply to the kitchen — the cook. The scribe closes with a tally, 14 sheep and 9 lambs, and the single word "expenditure," the standard bookkeeping stamp meaning the animals have left the account. Cylinder-seal impressions rolled across the edges show that a responsible official validated the transaction.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Livestock issued: two sheep picked out as select offering animals; one lamb as the share of UD-ḪUB2; one lamb for Dumuzi; one lamb for Lugal-pa'e; one sheep to the cook; five lambs for the Abzu shrine; eleven sheep, and a kid(?) listed as returned. The totals come to 14 sheep and 9 lambs, all booked as expenditure — that is, debited from the herd account. A few signs, including the number at the eleven-sheep entry and the word read as "kid," are damaged and partly restored.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 sheep, "chosen by the heart" (i.e. selected for offering); 1 lamb, the portion of UD-ḪUB2; 1 lamb, (for) Dumuzi; 1 lamb, (for) Lugal-pa'e; 1 sheep, (for) the cook; 5 lambs, (for) the Abzu; [1]1 sheep, kid(?), returned (šu-gi4-gi4); Total: 14 sheep, 10 minus 1 (= 9) lambs. Expenditure (booked out).
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 photo5 uncertain terms ↓
- sza3-ge pa3-da — 'Chosen by/from the heart' — a technical term for specially selected animals, likely of cultic quality. The precise nuance (selected by oracle, by inspection, or for a specific ritual purpose) is debated.
- UD-ḪUB₂ — Reading uncertain (marked # in transliteration). Possibly a personal name, a place, or a cultic designation. Cannot be confirmed from the photograph at this resolution.
- masz#? szu-gi4-gi4 — Both signs marked uncertain. 'szu-gi4-gi4' can mean 'returned,' 'replaced,' or 'given back.' If 'masz' is correct, it may indicate a goat rather than a sheep, complicating the total count; alternatively it may be a verb or qualifier. The '#?' notation in the transliteration signals low confidence.
- zi-ga — 'Expended' / 'issued' / 'disbursed' — standard Sumerian administrative term for goods officially removed from store. Rendered 'expended' here following conventional practice.
- [1(u@c)] 1(asz@c) — The ten-unit sign is restored in brackets (broken). The total '14 sheep, 9 (= 10 minus 1) lambs' depends on this restoration; it is standard in Umma administrative arithmetic but cannot be independently verified from the photograph.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a small, roughly square clay tablet in two views (obverse and reverse/case), plus what appear to be edge views on the left and right — this looks like an envelope-and-tablet combination or a tablet with a clay case. The museum accession number 'AO 19721' is painted in blue ink on the reverse/case, confirming the catalog identification. The obverse carries several lines of cuneiform; individual wedges are visible but resolution makes sign-by-sign confirmation difficult. The uppermost lines are somewhat eroded and the surface shows some wear and a dark discolouration patch mid-tablet consistent with the '#' uncertain markers in the transliteration. The final few lines on the lower portion (reverse) show horizontal ruling and what appear to be numerical and sign groupings consistent with a summary line. I can broadly confirm the layout — numerical signs at the left margin, text to the right — and the summary/total structure matches the transliteration's 'szunigin' and 'zi-ga' lines. Specific sign readings such as 'masz#? szu-gi4#-gi4' and 'UD#-HUB2#' cannot be individually verified from the photo at this resolution; the '#' flags in the transliteration are accepted on scholarly authority. The Umma provenance and Akkadian period dating are consistent with this type of livestock-disbursement administrative document.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 12, 2026 · 2878 in / 1044 out tokens
Transliteration
2(asz@c) udu# sza3-ge pa3-da 1(asz@c) sila4 za3 UD#-HUB2# 1(asz@c) sila4 dumu-zi 1(asz@c) sila4 lugal-pa-e3 1(asz@c) udu muhaldim 5(asz@c) sila4 ab-zu [1(u@c)] 1(asz@c) udu masz#? szu-gi4#-gi4 szunigin 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) udu 1(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) sila4 zi-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — AAS 012. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P212448) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.
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.