Position in chronology
FTP 030
About this tablet
A barley disbursement record from the Sumerian city of Šuruppak (modern Fara, in southern Iraq), dated to roughly 2600–2500 BCE. Under a heading that can be read as 'barley: issued,' five or more named individuals each receive a standardized allotment — most entries showing 1 gur and 2 barig, a substantial volume of grain suggesting officials or higher-status workers rather than basic laborers receiving daily rations. The tablet belongs to the large administrative archive excavated at Šuruppak, one of the clearest surviving records of how Early Dynastic Sumerian institutions tracked the movement of agricultural produce: grain drawn from a central storehouse, allocated in fixed quantities, and carefully written down in clay against named recipients.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a list of barley drawn from storage and distributed to named individuals. Ur-BAD-DAB, Sud-ur-sag, and Lugal-GAR-NI each received 1 gur and 2 barig of barley — a substantial, standardized portion, probably a monthly or seasonal allocation. A fourth person, tentatively named Na-diri, received a smaller or damaged amount of around 1 barig. Ur-mes received the same standard 1 gur and 2 barig. A final partial entry — possibly a designation or place name beginning Ur-[ni] — and whatever records followed are lost where the tablet is broken off.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] barley: issued 1 gur, 2 barig — Ur-BAD-DAB 1 gur, 2 barig — Sud-ur-sag 1 gur, 2 barig — Lugal-GAR-NI [x,] 1 barig(?) — Na-diri(?) 1 gur, 2 barig — Ur-mes Ur-[ni](?) [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] sze lid2#-ga 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ur-BAD3-DAB5 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sud3-ur-sag 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) lugal-GAR-NI [x] 1(barig@c)#? na-diri#? 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ur#-mes ur2#-[ni] [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 030. 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 (P222104) — 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.