Position in chronology
MAD 4, 113
About this tablet
A small delivery receipt from Umma, a provincial city in southern Iraq, written under the kings of Akkad around 2300–2200 BCE. It records six goat skins, sorted by condition, delivered for an offering made by the city governor, the local ruler who answered to the Akkadian king. Such notes show how even modest materials like leather were tracked for temple and cult purposes, and how the Umma scribes of this period dated their records by year and month.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Received: four whole goat skins and two that are not whole, for the governor's offering. Mutila and Dumuzi-andul brought them in. Dated year 3, month 10.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 4 goat skins, whole (za3-šu4); 2. 2 goat skins, not whole (za3 nu-šu4); 3. for the governor's offering, 4. Mutila, 5. Dumuzi-andul 6. brought (them). 7. Year 3, month 10.
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
4(asz@c) kusz ud5 za3-szu4 2(asz@c) kusz ud5 za3 nu-szu4 ensi2 nidba-ka mu-ti-la-a dumu-zi-an-dul3-e mu-kux(DU) 3(disz@t) mu 1(u) iti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 113. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215275) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (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.