Position in chronology
CT 50, 049
About this tablet
A livestock administrative record from the Akkadian period (roughly 2334–2154 BCE) at Girsu, in what is now southern Iraq. A temple or palace scribe has tallied two separate batches of animals — first 566 sheep and 303 female goats recorded on the main wide-format account tablet, then a smaller lot of 135 sheep and 12 lambs — distinguishing animals earmarked for the current slaughter rotation from those kept at pasture. The document is dated by a year formula that names a specific administrative event — a draft-animal expedition to a provisioning hall — rather than a numbered year, which was the normal calendrical practice in Sargonic Mesopotamia. Records like this one are the routine paperwork behind the vast livestock system that fed temples, soldiers, and officials across the empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The ledger records 566 sheep and 303 female goats, entered on the official wide-format tablet. A separate count follows: 135 sheep and 12 lambs, some of which are animals set aside for the current slaughter rotation, the rest designated as pasture stock. The document is dated to the year when the road-team expedition at the drinking-hall was established — the name the scribes gave to that particular year in place of a number.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine566 sheep, 303 female goats — confirmed on the broad tablet. 135 sheep, 12 lambs: these are sheep of the slaughter-rotation. Sheep at pasture. Year: the expedition-yoke at the drinking-hall was established.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
9(gesz2) 2(u) 6(disz) udu 5(gesz2) 3(disz) ud5 im dagal gi4-na 2(gesz2) 1(u) 5(disz) udu 1(u) 2(asz@c) sila4 udu gir2 bala-am3 udu u2-du mu kaskal-szudul unu nag-su-a ba-gar-ra-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — CT 50, 049. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: BM 086299 (British Museum, London, UK) — from Girsu (mod. Tello) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P212955). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.
Part of the earliest known body of international diplomatic correspondence. Akkadian, written in cuneiform on clay, was the lingua franca of Late Bronze Age statecraft — used between Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, and the Levantine vassals.