Position in chronology
AAS 012
About this tablet
This is a small Akkadian-period administrative tablet from Umma (southern Iraq), an itemized account of sheep and lambs drawn from a temple or palace livestock office and distributed for specific purposes — some to named cultic destinations like the god Dumuzi and the Abzu shrine, some to functionaries such as a cook and a diviner. It closes with a running total and the standard bookkeeping notation "zi-ga," meaning the animals were formally recorded as expended or issued out of the herd account. Tablets of this exact type are extremely common from Umma's Sargonic-period bureaucracy, which tracked livestock movements in and out of state and temple flocks with great precision.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a livestock disbursement record. Two sheep are marked as specially selected. Individual lambs are assigned: one connected to something called UD-ḪUB2 (unclear), one to the god Dumuzi, one to a deity or figure called Lugal-pa'e, one sheep to the kitchen staff (the cook), and five lambs to the Abzu shrine. A further eleven sheep go to the diviner. The tally at the bottom totals fourteen sheep and nine lambs, and the whole batch is logged as issued out of the flock's accounts — an ordinary bookkeeping entry closing out that period's allotment.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 sheep, "chosen by the heart" (selected/designated) 1 lamb, the flank(?) of UD-ḪUB2 (uncertain term/name) 1 lamb (for) Dumuzi 1 lamb (for) Lugal-pa'e 1 sheep (for) the cook 5 lambs (for) the Abzu [1]1 sheep, (for) the diviner (maš-šu-gi4-gi4) Total: 14 sheep, 10 minus 1 (= 9) lambs — booked out (disbursed).
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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-sonnet-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.