Position in chronology
MAD 4, 111
About this tablet
A short receipt from Umma in southern Iraq, written in the time of the Akkadian kings (about 2300–2150 BCE). It records a few sheep and goat skins handed over by two men, Ur-Šara and Ur-Suen, and carried by a man named Lugal-e-ge to someone called Gurgulum. Hides were valuable raw material for leather, and this tiny note shows how even a handful of skins was tracked through the local economy, down to the year and month.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ur-Šara handed over two ewe skins and one goat skin, and Ur-Suen handed over one goat skin. Lugal-e-ge took the skins to Gurgulum. Recorded in year 22, with all 12 months of the year completed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2 ewe skins, 2. 1 nanny-goat skin: 3. Ur-Šara; 4. 1 nanny-goat skin: 5. Ur-Suen. 6. Lugal-e-ge 7. to Gurgulum 8. took (them). 9. 22nd year, 12 months completed.
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. 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
2(asz@c) kusz u8 1(asz@c) kusz ud5 ur-szara2 1(asz@c) kusz ud5 ur-suen lugal-e-ge ki gur8-gu-lum-ma-sze3 mu-gid2 2(u) 2(disz@t) mu 1(u) 2(disz@t) iti til-la
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 111. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215273) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
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.