Position in chronology
Adab 0696
About this tablet
A small personnel roster from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written during the Old Akkadian period (roughly 2300 BCE). It lists eight workers by name, divided into two gangs of four, each headed by a foreman — Da-akkil and Idi-i7 — who are also counted among the men. Notably, the names mix Sumerian (Ur-Enlila, Utu-saga) and Akkadian (Išarrum, Idi-i7) forms, a snapshot of the bilingual society of Sargonic Mesopotamia. Such muster lists were the basic paperwork by which the state tracked its labor force.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A work-crew sign-in sheet. First team: Da-akkil, Utu-saga, Ur-Enlila, and Girini — supervisor, Da-akkil. Second team: Idi-i7, Išarrum, Inima, and Ur-nigar (the clerk forgot the tally mark before his name) — supervisor, Idi-i7. Eight men in all, four to a squad, each squad answering to its own foreman. Nothing more: no wages, no task specified on the tablet itself — just who was on the roster and who was responsible for them.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (man): Da-akkil, 1 (man): Utu-saga, 1 (man): Ur-Enlila, 1 (man): Girini — foreman: Da-akkil. 1 (man): Idi-i7, 1 (man): Išarrum, 1 (man): Inima, <1 (man)>: Ur-nigar — foreman: Idi-i7.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz@c) da-akkil 1(asz@c) utu-sa6-ga 1(asz@c) ur-en-lil2-la2 1(asz@c) giri3-ni ugula da-akkil 1(asz@c) i-di3-i7 1(asz@c) i-szar-ru-um 1(asz@c) inim-ma <1(asz@c)> ur-nigar ugula i-di3-i7
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0696. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P217494) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. 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.
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.