Position in chronology
HSS 10, 196
About this tablet
A personnel roster from Gasur (the later Nuzi, in northern Iraq) in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. An administrator is counting female workers and their children — boys and girls tallied separately — and grouping them under named supervisors such as the overseer Simumu. Lists like this tracked dependent labor gangs attached to a household or state institution, and they are among our best evidence for how women's and children's work was organized in the Sargonic economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a headcount of a labor crew. The opening entries are damaged, but the readable portion counts female workers — at least eleven in one group — under a woman or official named Enana. Then come the children: one squad has eight boys and two girls, assigned to the overseer Simumu; another has eight boys and three girls, listed under a person whose name ends in -dudu. In short: a manager's tally of women and children on the workforce, organized gang by gang under their supervisors.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [......] female workers (geme₂) 2. [PN ......]-x-da 3. [n +] 11 female workers 4. Enana 5. 8 boys, 2 girls — 6. overseer: Simumu 7. 8 boys, 3 girls — 8. [...]-dudu
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
[...] geme2 [...]-x-da [n] 1(u@c) 1(asz@c) geme2 e-na-na 8(asz@c) dumu-nita 2(asz@c) dumu-munus ugula si-mu-mu 8(asz@c) dumu-nita 3(asz@c) dumu-munus x-du-du
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 196. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P213461) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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