Position in chronology
MAD 4, 083
About this tablet
A small accounting receipt from the city of Umma in southern Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE). It records the delivery of two goatskins — the hides of two nanny goats — each credited to a named owner, handed over by one man and accounted under a named shepherd. Tablets like this were the routine paperwork by which herding offices tracked animals that died in the flock: the hide had to be turned in to prove the loss.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: two hides from mother goats. One hide belongs to Ur-Šara's account, the other to Ur-Suen's. Dumuzi-andul made the delivery, and Utu-mu is the shepherd responsible for the animals. Filed in the fifth year, ninth month. It is a complete little record — nothing is broken or missing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 1 hide of a mother goat — 2 it is (that) of Ur-Šara; 3 1 hide of a mother goat — 4 it is (that) of Ur-Suen. 5 Dumuzi-andul 6 delivered (them). 7 Utu-mu (is) the shepherd. 8 Year 5, month 9 (lit. 10 minus 1).
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(disz) kusz ud5 ama ur-szara2-ka-kam 1(disz) kusz ud5 ama ur-suen-kam dumu-zi-an-dul3-e mu-kux(DU) utu-mu sipa 5(disz@t) mu 1(u) la2 1(disz@t) iti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 083. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215245) — 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.