Position in chronology
MAD 4, 094
About this tablet
A small herding account from Umma in southern Iraq, written under the Akkadian dynasty (around 2300–2200 BCE). A shepherd named Utu-mu is debited with a handful of young animals — kids and a lamb, some explicitly noted as not yet branded — booked out under the names of two men, Ur-Šara and Ur-Suen. It is a scrap of the everyday bookkeeping by which temple and state administrators tracked every animal in a flock, down to whether it had received its ownership mark.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three young goats, not yet branded, plus one male lamb — these are charged to Ur-Šara. One more unbranded kid is charged to Ur-Suen. All of these count as goats expended from the flock. The responsible herdsman is Utu-mu, the shepherd. The account covers a span recorded as five years and eight months.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 kids (young goats), not branded; 1 male lamb: (these are) of Ur-Šara. 1 kid, not branded: (this is) of Ur-Suen. Expended goats (goats booked as expenditure). Utu-mu, the shepherd. 5 years, 8 months.
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
3(asz@c) masz2 za3 nu-szu2 1(asz@c) sila4-nita ur-szara2-kam 1(asz@c) masz2 za3 nu-szu2 ur-suen-kam masz2 zi-ga utu-mu sipa 5(disz@t) mu 8(disz@t) iti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 094. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215256) — 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.