Position in chronology
Fowler X66-1609
About this tablet
A small administrative account from the Old Akkadian period (c. 2350–2200 BCE), findspot unknown, now in the Fowler Museum at UCLA. The surviving entries tally livestock — sixty rams and ninety-four ewes — along with quantities of a commodity measured by the gur capacity unit and, on the damaged portion, an entry apparently involving copper and perhaps a personal name. It is the everyday bookkeeping of an estate or institution that managed flocks and stores, too broken to tie to a specific transaction.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
An inventory sheet, most of it lost. The readable part counts animals and goods: 60 male sheep, 94 ewes, then about 20 gur (a bulk capacity measure, roughly 300 liters each in this period) of some commodity — possibly juniper aromatic — followed by another, illegible quantity of the same. After a gap the tablet resumes with what may be someone's name ending in '-mu', a damaged line mentioning copper, and a closing phrase of the type 'this is the (total/price) of...'. The rest is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1(geš₂) (= 60) male sheep, 2. 1(geš₂) 3(u) 4(aš) (= 94) ewes, 3. 2(u)(?) (= 20?) gur of li-(aromatic?), 4. x (x) gur of li-(aromatic?), (Break) 5'. ...-mu (a personal name?), 6'. ... ... copper(?), 7'. ... it is (that) of [...](?), (rest broken)
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(gesz2@c) udu-nita 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) 4(asz@c) u8 2(u@c)#? gur li x (x) gur# li [...] x-[x]-mu# x (x) x uruda#? x [x x]-kam#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Fowler X66-1609. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA (P272631) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
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.