Position in chronology
DCS 045
About this tablet
An administrative roster from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300–2150 BCE), listing individuals — most bearing feminine names like Nin-maše, Nin-lu, and Nin-zi — one per line, and noting which official each person or group is stationed with: a doorkeeper named Papa, a scribe named Abba, and others. It is the kind of everyday personnel accounting by which Mesopotamian institutions tracked their workforce, likely female laborers or dependents assigned to supervisors. Tablets like this, though terse, are among our best windows into how ordinary people — especially women — were organized and counted in the earliest territorial empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A head-count of personnel, one name at a time: Nin-maše, one; two women whose names are partly effaced; Mamma, one; Ammama, one; another whose name is damaged; Nin-lu, one; and Munus-ge, one — this last group posted with a man whose name begins Lugal-. Then Papa the doorkeeper, one; three people assigned to Abba the scribe; and finally Nin-zi, one, stationed with NINA. In modern terms: a staffing sheet recording which supervisor each worker reports to.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 Nin-maše, 2. 1 [...]-gi(?), 3. 1 [...]-gal, 4. 1 Mamma, 5. 1 Ammama, 6. 1 [...]-gal, 7. 1 Nin-lu, 8. [1] Munus-ge, 9. with Lugal-...-KA; 10. 1 Papa, the doorkeeper, 11. 3 (persons) with Abba the scribe; 12. 1 Nin-zi, 13. with NINA(-ka).
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)# nin-masz-e 1(asz@c) () gi#? 1(asz@c) () gal2# 1(asz@c) ma-am3-ma 1(asz@c) am3-ma-ma 1(asz@c) () gal2# 1(asz@c) nin-lu2 [1(asz@c)] munus-ge6 ki lugal-x-x-KA# 1(asz@c) pa4-pa4 i3-du8 3(asz@c) ki ab-ba dub-sar-ka 1(asz@c) nin-zi ki# NINA-ka
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — DCS 045. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France (P213132) — 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.