Position in chronology
Anonymous 270814
About this tablet
A grain-disbursement record from Early Dynastic Umma (around 2500–2350 BCE), allocating identical rations of 1 gur and 1 barig each to workers involved in a boat journey to the city of Šuruppak — a fisherman making the trip, an overseer of boatmen, a storehouse scribe, and an administrative agent. The strict repetition of the same quantity across every legible entry is a hallmark of formulaic ED provisioning: standard travel or duty rations, not individually negotiated pay. Šuruppak, one of the legendary pre-flood cities of Sumerian tradition, appears here not in myth but in the mundane paperwork of inter-city river transport on the Euphrates.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with the name of an official — Ur-Amaraka — though the lines around his name are too damaged to read. What follows is a tightly formatted list: a fisherman traveling to Šuruppak is issued 1 gur and 1 barig of grain; the overseer of the boatmen receives a ration as well, though his quantity line is partially lost; the scribe attached to the storehouse gets 1 gur and 1 barig; and so does the administrative agent. Same amount, three or four entries in a row — the standard provisions for a river-transport crew, written down and filed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: [x x] x Ur-Amaraka [x] Line 2: 1 gur, 1 barig — fisherman — to Šuruppak, delivered Line 3: [...] overseer of boatmen Line 4: 1 gur, 1 barig — storehouse scribe Line 5: 1 gur, 1 barig — agent (PA-official)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[x x] x ur-amar-ka5 [x] 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) lu2 ku6-da szuruppak-sze3 DU [...] ugula# ma2#-lah5 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) dub-sar ganun 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) maszkim PA
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — Anonymous 270814. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P270814) — 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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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.