Position in chronology
MAD 4, 082
About this tablet
A small herding receipt from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE). A shepherd named Utu-mugi handed over three goats — a mother nanny and two kids — belonging to a man called Ur-Šara, timed to the festival of the god Dumuzi, the dying-and-rising shepherd god whose feast was a fixture of the pastoral calendar. It is a snapshot of how religious festivals doubled as accounting deadlines for livestock managers.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Delivery record: one mother nanny goat, one young kid (zag-šu grade), and one kid earmarked for the regular offering. These animals belong to Ur-Šara. The shepherd Utu-mugi delivered them at the festival of Dumuzi. The final line notes a count of five years — most likely a running tally or the term of the arrangement under which the shepherd accounted for the herd.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 nanny goat, a mother, 1 kid, zag-šu, 1 kid, (for the) regular offering — it is (the property) of Ur-Šara. Utu-mugi, the shepherd, at the festival of Dumuzi delivered (them). 5 years (recorded).
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
1(asz@c) ud5 ama 1(asz@c) masz2 za3-szu4 1(asz@c) masz2 sza3-du10 ur-szara2-ka-kam utu-mu-gi4 sipa ezem dumu-zi-ka i3-de6 5(disz@t) mu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 082. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215244) — 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.