Position in chronology
MAD 4, 046
About this tablet
A small herding account from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), now in the Louvre. It tallies breeding ewes and nanny goats entrusted to a handful of named individuals and to the 'ox-house', an institutional cattle establishment. Records like this are how ancient estate managers kept track of livestock dispersed among shepherds — the routine bookkeeping behind Mesopotamia's wool and dairy economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
An inventory of small livestock by keeper: the cattle barn holds 11 mother ewes and 17 mother goats. Igi-nin has 1 ewe and 8 goats; Utu-hili has about 2 ewes and an unreadable number of goats; Nigar has some ewes and 3 goats; Ur-Utu's figures are too damaged to read; Ur-li has some ewes and 5 goats. Several of the numerals are broken away, but the format is clear — each pair of lines gives the animal counts, then the person responsible for them.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine11 mother ewes, 20 minus 3 (= 17) mother nanny goats: the ox-house (é-gu₄, the cattle barn/estate). 1 ewe, 8 nanny goats: Igi-nin. 2(?) ewes, [x] nanny goats: Utu-ḫili. [x] ewes, 3 nanny goats: Nigar. [x] ewes, [x] nanny goats: Ur-Utu. [x] ewes, 5 nanny goats: Ur-li.
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
1(u) 1(disz) u8 ama 2(u) la2 3(asz@c) ud5 ama e2-gu4 1(asz@c) u8 8(disz) ud5 igi-nin 2(disz)? u8 x ud5 utu-hi-li x u8 3(asz@c) ud5 nigar x u8 x ud5 ur-utu x u8 5(asz@c) ud5 ur-li
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 046. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215208) — 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.