Position in chronology
AO 03393
About this tablet
A ration account from the Old Akkadian period (about 2300 BCE), almost certainly from the Lagash-Girsu region, since it is dated by the local month "Festival of Baba," the city goddess. A scribe records dates (the fruit) being paid out to a list of workers — nearly all of them women, to judge by names like Geme-Šulpa'e ("maidservant of the god Šulpa'e") — mostly at three sila (roughly three liters) apiece, with two people receiving much larger amounts. It is a small window onto how a great household fed and paid its female labor force, one name at a time.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a payout record for dates. The heading books three donkey-loads of dates in leather sacks, issued at three sila (about three liters) per person. Then come the recipients: Ur-šul, Geme-bani, Geme-Šulpa'e, Meme, Nin-hegal, Geme-Ištaran, Zizi, Sa-sa, Ka-sa and E-zi each get the standard three sila, while Nin-alla and Lu-Nunki receive around sixty — perhaps supervisors or heads of gangs. The account is dated to the month of the Festival of Baba and closed with the bookkeeper's stamp of finality: booked as expenditure.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3 donkey(-loads) of leather sacks(?) of dates — at 3 sila each: 2. Ur-šul, 3. 3 (sila): Geme-ba?-ni, 4. 3 (sila): Geme-Šulpa'e, 5. 60(?) (sila): Nin-alla, 6. 3 (sila): Meme, 7. 3 (sila): Nin-hegal, 8. 3 (sila): Geme-Ištaran, 9. 3 (sila): Zizi, 10. 3 (sila): Sa-sa, 11. 3 (sila): Ka-sa, 12. 3(?) (sila): E-zi, 13. 60(?) (sila): Lu-Nunki. 14. Month: "Festival of Baba." 15. Expenditure (zi-ga).
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
3(disz@t) ansze kusz zu2#-lum 3(disz) sila3#-ta ur-szul 3(disz@t) geme2-ba?-ni 3(disz@t) geme2-szul-pa-e3 1(gesz2)? nin-al-la# 3(disz@t) me-me 3(disz@t) nin-he2-gal2 3(disz@t)# geme2-isztaran 3(disz@t) zi-zi 3(disz@t) sa6-sa6 3(disz@t)# ka-sa6 3(disz@t)#? e2-zi 1(gesz2)? lu2-nun-ki itix(|UD@sxTIL|) ezem ba-ba6 zi-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — AO 03393. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P491928) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-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.