Position in chronology
FTP 032
About this tablet
A small administrative ration tablet from the Early Dynastic archive at Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), dating to roughly 2600–2500 BCE. The legible lower entries record grain allocations — measured in ban, each roughly ten liters — issued to two named individuals, Ur-Sud and Adda-tur, with a note of one day of labor and a day-date of 2. The upper half of the tablet is broken away, leaving only fragments of context: a building reference, what appears to be cedar or cedar-resin, and a partially preserved place or personal name. These small lenticular tablets are the everyday paperwork of the earliest urban administration — thousands of them were found at Fara.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two workers were paid out in grain on the second day: Ur-Sud received 2 ban (roughly 20 liters) and Adda-tur received 3 ban (roughly 30 liters). There is also a note of one day's labor owed or performed. The first four lines are too broken to read fully — they seem to mention a building, cedar products, and a name or place ending in 'Surra,' but the context is lost. The rest of the tablet is missing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] Sur[ra] [...] [x]-Sud [...] é-ur₂ [...] a-eren₂ Labor: 1 day 2 ban₂ — Ur-Sud 3 ban₂ — Adda-tur Day 2
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] sur#-[ra] [...] [x]-sud3 [...] e2-ur2 [...] a-eren2 a2 u4 1(disz@t) 2(ban2@c) ur-sud3 3(ban2@c) ad#-da-tur# u4 2(disz@t)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 032. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P222106) — 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.
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.