Position in chronology
MAD 4, 089
About this tablet
A small accounting note from Umma in southern Iraq, written during the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, around 2300 BCE. A clerk records the delivery of a few animals — rams and a young goat — naming the man who brought them, the household they came from, and the owner of two of the sheep. Thousands of such slips tracked the constant movement of livestock through institutional pens, and together they let us reconstruct the herding economy of a Mesopotamian provincial town.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: one ram, delivered by Aya-bi-nar from the household of A-mašzu. Also on hand: one young male goat and one ram belonging to Abi-gi. The final line is a numerical notation — twenty-two against 'year' and ten against 'month' — most likely a date or an elapsed-time tally closing the account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ram, (from) Aya-<bi>-nar, from the house of A-mašzu: delivery. 1 male kid, 1 ram: sheep of Abi-gi. 22 — year(s); 10 — month(s).
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) udu-nita a-a-<bi>-nar-e e2-a-masz-zu-ta mu-kux(DU) 1(asz@c) masz2-nita 1(asz@c) udu-nita udu a-bi2-gi4 2(u) 2(disz@t) mu 1(u) iti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 089. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215251) — 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.