Position in chronology
MAD 4, 135
About this tablet
A short livestock record from the Old Akkadian period, around 2300–2150 BCE. It is now in the Louvre, and its findspot is unknown. It lists a flock of 65 sheep (breeding ewes, rams, and young lambs of both sexes) that belong to a man named Lugal-KA, and notes that they are housed at an 'ox-house', an institutional cattle and stock facility. It shows how privately or officially assigned animals were tracked when they were boarded at a larger establishment.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an inventory of Lugal-KA's sheep. There are 26 breeding ewes, 26 rams, 7 ewe lambs and 6 ram lambs, and the lambs are marked as regular-delivery stock. The whole flock is currently kept at the ox-house.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 26 sheep: mother ewes, 2. 26 rams, 3. 7 female lambs, regular (delivery), 4. 6 male lambs, regular (delivery): 5. (these) are the sheep of Lugal-KA; 6. at the ox-house 7. they are kept.
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(u) 6(disz) udu u8 ama 2(u) 6(disz) udu-nita 7(asz@c) kir11 sza3-du10 6(disz) sila4-nita sza3-du10 udu lugal-KA-kam e2-gu4-da i3-da-szex(SIG7)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — MAD 4, 135. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P215295) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (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.