Position in chronology
MAD 1, 311
About this tablet
An administrative livestock record from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar in Iraq) during the Old Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2150 BCE. A scribe is tallying animals — sheep, ewe lambs, and two aged male donkeys — each entry paired with the person responsible for or receiving them. One of those people is a woman, Zuzu, identified by her home city of Dēr, a rare glimpse of a named woman in the working economy of the Akkadian state.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short animal ledger. So many sheep are booked to Šu-Mama, and three ewe lambs to Amarum. Two further names in the middle of the list are too damaged to read in full. Then come the donkeys: one old male donkey for Aḫuḫu, son of Ušum, and another old male donkey for Zuzu, a woman from the city of Dēr. The number of sheep at the top is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [n] sheep — 2. [Šu]-Mama; 3. 3 female lambs — 4. Amarum; 5. [...]-eri; 6. [...]-LUL; 7. 1 old male donkey — 8. Aḫuḫu, son of Ušum; 9. 1 old male donkey — 10. Zuzu, the woman of Dēr.
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] _udu_ [szu]-ma-ma 3(asz@c) _kir11_ a-ma-ru-um [...]-e-ri [...]-LUL# 1(asz@c) _ansze-libir-nita_ a-hu-hu _dumu_ uszum 1(asz@c) _ansze-libir-nita_ zu#-zu sza-at |BAD3.AN|#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 1, 311. 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 (P215139) — 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.