Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 202
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative memorandum from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), probably dating to around 2500–2400 BCE, now in the Schøyen Collection in Oslo. The small lenticular clay tablet — the standard pocket-sized format for short ED accounts — records a mixed delivery or allocation: nine chariots associated with a class of dependent workers, four units of an unidentified commodity, three plowmen, and a damaged count of laborers, all linked to an institution called the é-dumu ('children's house'), possibly a palace workshop or dependent household. The closing month name, the sheep-pen shearing month, roots the transaction firmly in the seasonal agricultural calendar at Adab.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Under the account of a person named Igi-zi: nine chariots assigned to a contingent of dependent workers; four units of a commodity called mud; three plowmen; and an unrecoverable number of additional laborers — all belonging to the é-dumu institution. The goods or personnel were brought to (or dispatched by) AN. This took place during the month of sheep-pen shearing. The opening figure and the worker count are too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] Igi-zi: [(10) minus (1) =] 9 chariot(s) — szubur [dependent workers]; 4 [units of] mud; 3 plowmen (sag-apin); [n] workers (erin₂); (belonging) to the é-dumu [children's house]; brought/delivered [to/by] AN; Month: [of] sheep-pen shearing.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[n] i@t-zi 1(u@c) la2 1(disz@t)# gigir2 szubur 4(asz@c) mud 3(asz@c) sag-apin [n] erin2 e2-dumu-kam an-de6 iti ga2-udu-ur4-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 202. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252771) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.