Position in chronology
MAD 4, 031
About this tablet
An administrative record from Umma in southern Iraq, written during the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, roughly 2300 BCE. It tracks small lots of sheep and goats — rams, a kid, lambs — moving between households, a field, and a shrine of the grain-goddess Nisaba, naming the officials who delivered, received, or drove the animals. Documents like this are the raw paperwork of Mesopotamia's livestock economy: not literature, but the day-to-day bookkeeping that kept temple and estate herds accounted for.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A running tally of sheep transfers. Some rams went to a household whose name is broken; two more to Iri-sig-...; another lot at Da-gešhar was brought in by En-ane. Rams at the 'house of the mound' were handed over to Namtila, and one more ram — connected with the goddess Nisaba's establishment — also went to Namtila. Two rams and a young goat destined for the 'exalted field' were driven off by Geme-ea. The list closes with one ewe lamb and one male lamb, and what seems to be a total of seventeen animals with a year and month notation, now mostly lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [n rams] — the house of [...]; 2. 2(?) rams — Iri-sig-[...]; 3. [n] rams — (at/for) Da-gešhar: 4. En-ane brought (them); 5. [n] rams — (at) the house of the mound (e₂-du₆): 6. he gave (them) to Namtila; 7. 1 ram — the geš-aš(?) of Nisaba, (at) the house of the nam-zu of the rope(?): 8. he gave (it) to Namtila; 9. 2 rams, 1 kid — (for/at) GAN₂-maḫ (the 'exalted field'): 10. Geme-ea drove (them) off; 11. 1 female lamb, 1 [male] lamb; 12. [17 (animals in all?); year ..., month ...].
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 udu-nita] e2 [...] 2(disz)? udu-nita iri-sig4#-[...] [...] udu-nita da-gesz-har en-an-ne2 ba-du-[du] [...] udu-nita e2 du6-ka nam-ti-la-ra e-na-szum2# 1(asz@c) udu-nita gesz-asz nisaba e2 nam-zu esz2-ka nam-ti-la-ra e-na-szum2 2(asz@c) udu-nita 1(asz@c) masz2 GAN2-mah geme2-e3-a ba-lah5 1(asz@c) kir11 1(asz@c) sila4#-[nita] [1(u) 7(disz@t) mu x iti]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 031. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215193) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.