Position in chronology
MAD 4, 132
About this tablet
A short personnel record from the Old Akkadian period, around 2300–2200 BCE, now in the Louvre. It lists five workers from a single labour team and notes which official took each one away from the team: an army captain, a scribe, a shepherd's son and a merchant. The final line names the team's foreman, E-ur, who was accountable for his crew. The tablet shows how closely Akkadian-era administrators tracked the movement of workers, even individual men leaving a gang.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two men, Ur-Šara and Dada, were taken by Ur-saga, the captain. Ur-KU-ma was taken by Šubur, the scribe. Ur-teš was taken by Dada, the shepherd's son. Gala was taken by Ikuku, the merchant. That accounts for all the men withdrawn from the team, whose foreman is E-ur.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse/Reverse (no section markers given in source): 1. 1 (man): Ur-Šara; 2. 1 (man): Dada — 3. Ur-saga, the captain (nu-banda), took them away. 4. 1 (man): Ur-KU-ma — 5. Šubur, the scribe, took him away. 6. 1 (man): Ur-teš — 7. Dada, son of the shepherd, took him away. 8. 1 (man): Gala — 9. Ikuku, the merchant, took him away. 10. (These are) men who were taken away. 11. E-ur is their foreman.
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
1(asz@c) ur-szara2 1(asz@c) da-da ur-sa6-ga nu-banda3 ba-lah4 1(asz@c) ur-KU-ma szubur dub-sar ba-de6 1(asz@c) ur-tesz2 da-da dumu sipa-de3 ba-de6 1(asz@c) gala i-ku-ku dam-gar3 ba-de6 lu2-szu ba-de6-me e2-ur2 ugula-bi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 132. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215292) — 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.