Position in chronology
Fs Sommerfeld & Krebernik 514-545 07
About this tablet
A short administrative account from the Old Akkadian period (about 2300 BCE), probably from Umma in southern Iraq, counting young donkeys. Four named men — one with an Akkadian name, three of them professional donkey herders — are each charged with a number of foals born to 'steppe jennies', likely female equids used in breeding donkey hybrids. A supervisor named Lugal-kure closes the account. It is a small window into the organized equid husbandry that supplied ancient Mesopotamia's draft and transport animals before the horse became common.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a livestock tally of donkey foals. Several foals of steppe jennies are assigned to Puzur-Malik; more (the numbers are broken off) to KA-ki, a donkey herder; more to Sag-šu, another donkey herder; and one foal to E-edine, also a donkey herder. Altogether the account covers seven foals of steppe jennies. The final lines record that an official named Lugal-kure handled or authorized the transaction, though the exact verb at the end is damaged in meaning.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [n foals] of steppe jennies — 2. Puzur-Malik; 3. [n] foals of steppe jennies — 4. KA-ki, the donkey herder; 5. [n] foals of steppe jennies — 6. Sag-šu, the donkey herder; 7. 1 foal of a steppe jenny — 8. E-edine, the donkey herder. 9. Total: 7 foals of steppe jennies. 10. Lugal-kure 11. ... (e-PA-PA).
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
[n amar] eme3#-[edin]-na#-ka puzur4# ma-li2-ik [n] amar# eme3#-edin-na-ka KA#-ki sipa ansze [n] amar# eme3#-edin-na-ka sag-szu sipa ansze 1(asz@c) amar eme3-edin-na-ka e2-edin-ne2 sipa ansze szu-nigin2 7(asz@c) amar eme3-edin-na lugal-kur-e e-PA-PA
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Fs Sommerfeld & Krebernik 514-545 07. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P270833) — 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.