Position in chronology
MAD 1, 285
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), found at Ešnunna in the Diyala region of Iraq. It records seven sheep assigned to or received from three named individuals, with a running total at the end linked to the city of Irisaĝrig. It is a snapshot of everyday livestock bookkeeping in the world's first territorial empire — the kind of modest receipt on which the Akkadian administrative machine ran.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a sheep ledger: three sheep are booked under Šu-Mama, two under Ida-ilum, and two under Puzrum. The clerk then adds it up — seven sheep in all — and files the lot under the heading of Irisaĝrig, the town connected with the transaction. Nothing more; it is a complete, self-contained tally slip.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3 sheep — 2. Šu-Mama; 3. 2 sheep — 4. Ida-ilum; 5. 2 sheep — 6. Puzrum. 7. Total: 7 sheep, 8. (of/for) Irisaĝrig.
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
3(asz@c) _udu_ szu-ma-ma 2(asz@c) _udu_ i-da-dingir 2(asz@c) _udu_ puzur4-ru-um _szu-nigin2_ 7(asz@c) _udu_ iri-sa12-rig7
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 285. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P215114) — 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.