Position in chronology
WF 101
About this tablet
An administrative tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), dating to around 2500 BCE, that records the mobilization of two large groups of men: 670 soldiers sent out on military service and 1,612 workers convened for a civic assembly. Each group has its food rations logged immediately below the headcount, and a final line notes a disbursement of oil. The tablet is a compact piece of city-state logistics — proof that early Sumerian administrators tracked both military deployment and communal gatherings with the same bureaucratic attention to supply.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Six hundred seventy men have been mustered and sent out for military action — their food rations are noted. A second group of 1,612 men is recorded as assembled for a community gathering, and their rations are likewise entered. The tablet closes with an entry for oil, recorded as a separate commodity disbursement. The rest of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine670 workers — battle muster — deployed (their) food rations 1,612 workers assembly (their) food rations oil — [fine/sesame]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(gesz'u@c) 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) gurusz me3 du nig2-gu7 2(gesz'u@c) 6(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) 2(asz@c) gurusz ukken nig2-gu7 i3 szesz4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 101. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011059) — 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.