Position in chronology
MAD 4, 134
About this tablet
A small receipt from Umma in southern Iraq, written during the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) empire, around 2300–2200 BCE. It records garlic handed out to three named people, one of them a married woman named E-ku. The entry is then booked as an expenditure under another woman, Ama-e, wife of Ur-Šara, who seems to have been in charge of the garlic stores. It is a glimpse of women acting as responsible parties in the everyday food economy of a provincial Mesopotamian town.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Garlic issued as payment: 5 units went to E-ku, the wife of Ur-šer; 2 units to Kurra; and 1 unit to Ur-du. They received it as wages. The garlic is charged as an outgoing expense to Ama-e, the wife of Ur-Šara. The final line notes '3 years', a time reference whose exact purpose is unclear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 5 (units of) garlic: 2. E-ku, 3. wife of Ur-šer; 4. 2 (units): Kurra; 5. 1 (unit): Ur-du. 6. Garlic (as) wages(?), 7. received. 8. Garlic expended (zi-ga), 9. (by) Ama-e, 10. wife of Ur-Šara. 11. 3 years.
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
5(asz@c) szum e2-ku3 dam ur-szer7 2(asz@c) kur-ra 1(asz@c) ur-du6 szum a2 szu ba-ti szum zi-ga ama-e2 dam ur-szara2-ka 3(disz@t) mu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 134. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215294) — 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.