Position in chronology
Anonymous 274873
About this tablet
A small administrative roster from the Sumerian city of Adab in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE). A scribe is counting men one by one — some by personal name (Akadu, Ur-geš, Ur-a, E-mah), one by his profession, a gala or lamentation-priest, the ritual singer of Sumerian temples. Tablets like this were the everyday paperwork of labor and personnel management: a quick tally of who was on hand or owed service. The surface damage in the middle lines has cost us at least one entry.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a headcount, one man per line: one man named Akadu; one named Ur-geš; one gala-priest (the cult singer — the entry repeats his title); one man whose name begins IL but is too damaged to read fully; a line too broken to make out, followed by the name Ur-a; and finally one man named E-mah. Six or seven people in all, ticked off with the single-stroke tally mark the accountants of the period used. The upper reverse of the tablet was left blank, as often when a short list did not fill the whole surface.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 (man): Akadu (A-KA-du₃), 2. 1 (man): Ur-geš, 3. 1 (man): the gala (lamentation-priest), 4. — the gala, 5. 1 (man): IL₂ ... (sign damaged), 6. ... ŠIR(?) UD(?) (broken), 7. Ur-a, 8. 1 (man): E-mah.
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
1(asz@c) A-KA-du3 1(asz@c) ur-gesz 1(asz@c) galax(|ARAD.KU|) galax(|ARAD.KU|) 1(asz@c) IL2 x? x SZIR? UD? ur-a2 1(asz@c) e2-mah
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Anonymous 274873. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P274873) — 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.