Position in chronology
WF 093
About this tablet
A labor and ration roster from Early Dynastic Šuruppak (modern Fara, Iraq), written around 2500 BCE. It tallies over 1,600 institutional workers — male laborers, child construction hands, and female workers — all drawing food rations from the city's central administration. A mathematical check is built into the tablet itself: the three categories listed above the subtotal line (1,532 + 39 + 41) add up to exactly 1,612, the same number restated below as the total count of ration-receiving persons — the scribe's way of confirming the books balance. A closing entry of 47 people associated with the city of Kiš, recorded as delivered or in transit, hints at the inter-city labor flows that knit the Early Dynastic city-states together.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The institution currently employs 1,532 male workers, 39 boys engaged in construction work, and 41 female workers — 1,612 people in all, every one of them drawing food rations from the central stores. The scribe confirms the arithmetic with a running subtotal before restating the same figure as the grand total of ration recipients. On top of that, 47 people from Kiš are recorded as delivered or transferred in.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1,532 male workers (guruš); 39 (= 40 less 1) child construction workers (dumu-dumu šitim); 41 female workers (geme₂); an-še₃-gu₂ [subtotal]; 1,612 persons receiving rations (lu₂ nig₂-gu₇); 47 (= 50 less 3) persons [of] Kiš — delivered (DU)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(gesz'u@c) 5(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) 2(asz@c) gurusz 4(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) dumu-dumu szitim 4(u@c) 1(asz@c) geme2 an-sze3-gu2 2(gesz'u@c) 6(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) 2(asz@c) lu2 nig2-gu7 5(u@c) la2 3(asz@c) lu2# kisz DU
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 093. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011050) — 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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