Position in chronology
Anonymous 271225
About this tablet
A short personnel roster from the Old Akkadian period (about 2300 BCE), probably from Umma in southern Iraq. Seven men are counted off one by one, and the closing formula records that a temple administrator named Lu-KU handed them over in a transaction involving a man with the Semitic name Ida-il. It is a piece of everyday labor bookkeeping — the transfer of a small work gang from one official's responsibility to another's — and the mix of Sumerian and Akkadian personal names captures the bilingual society of Sargonic Sumer.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a transfer receipt for seven workers, each listed by name with a tally mark: Ur-emega, Lugal-kešda, Ur-gu, Lugal-nigzu, Zamu, E-uri, and Amar-ku. Lu-KU, the temple administrator, gave them over in a transaction with Ida-il — in effect, seven men signed off from one official's books to another's. The back of the tablet is blank; the whole record fits on the front.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 1. 1 (man): Ur-emega (the scribe wrote ME-UM in error), 2. 1 (man): Lugal-kešda, 3. 1 (man): Ur-gu, 4. 1 (man): Lugal-nigzu, 5. 1 (man): Zamu, 6. 1 (man): E-uri, 7. 1 (man): Amar-ku, 8. (to) Ida-il, 9. Lu-KU, the temple administrator, 10. gave (them). (The reverse is uninscribed.)
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) ur-eme2!(ME-UM)-ga 1(asz@c) lugal-kesz3-da 1(asz@c) ur-gu 1(asz@c) lugal-nig2-zu 1(asz@c) za3-mu 1(asz@c) e2-uri 1(asz@c) amar-ku6 i-da-dingir lu2-KU sanga e-na-szum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Anonymous 271225. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P271225) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-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.