Position in chronology
LB 0014
About this tablet
A herd-account of pigs from the Old Akkadian period (roughly 2350–2200 BCE), from an unknown site in Mesopotamia and now in the Böhl Collection in Leiden. An administrator counts the swine by category — full-grown animals and piglets — and closes with a grand total of about 195 head described as 'standing', that is, present on hand or assigned to the institution. Pigs appear far less often in Mesopotamian accounts than sheep and cattle, so tallies like this are valuable evidence that institutional households kept sizeable pig herds.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
An inventory of pigs: at least ten (the tens digit is partly broken) adult pigs, thirty-five piglets, a damaged line, then ninety pigs of some further category whose label is lost. After a gap the account closes the books: in total 195 pigs — this being the number of pigs currently on hand in the herd. A gap in the tablet means the breakdown doesn't visibly add up to the total, but the bottom line is clear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineobv. 1. [n]+10 full-grown pigs, 2. 35 piglets, 3. [...] ... ...-a(?) [...], 4. 90 pigs [...], (break) 5. Total: 195(?) pigs — 6. (they are) pigs standing (on hand/allocated).
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
[n]+1(u@c) szah2-gal 3(u@c) 5(disz@c) szah2-tur [...] x ma#?-a [...] 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) szah2 [...] [...] szu-nigin2 3(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 5(disz@c)#? szah2 szah2 gub-ba-am3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — LB 0014. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland (P388590) — 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.