Position in chronology
CDLI Lexical 000003, ex. 011
About this tablet
A scribal-school exercise tablet from Nippur, almost certainly dating to around 2600–2500 BCE, preserving part of one of the standard Early Dynastic Sumerian lists of official titles. Student scribes at Nippur memorized these hierarchical rosters of cultic and administrative offices — purification priests, grand sages, viziers, palace attendants — as foundational literacy training, the same way a modern student might memorize an org chart. The titles listed here would have named real people working in the temples and palaces of Sumerian city-states at the time. The bottom of this particular copy is badly broken, but enough survives to identify the text type with confidence as part of the 'Lu' (Personnel) lexical tradition.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists a chain of official titles in hierarchical order: first the šušx official, then the pa-nam-šita inspector, then the chief purification priest, followed by a senior title whose sign compound is now difficult to read, then the lord of the IB-institution, the chief šita-official, the grand sage (abgal), the kingal official, and the palace attendant (tiru). A vizier of some kind follows, with a title partially lost to damage. The final line is too broken to read at all.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our enginešušx pa-nam-šita chief purification priest (iszib) great [BADxDIŠ-official] lord of IB chief šita-official abgal (grand sage) kingal tiru (palace attendant) [...] sukkal ([...] vizier/messenger) [...] x stone(?) x life/arrow(?) KAx[...] na [...] (too fragmentary to render)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
szuszx(|SZE.NAM2|) pa-nam2-szita3# esz3 iszib gal |BADxDISZ@t| en IB gal szita abgal kingal tiru# [...] sukkal [...] x na4 x ti |KAxX| na# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CDLI Lexical 000003, ex. 011. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany (P020642) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.