Position in chronology
FTP 067
About this tablet
A beer-ration distribution record from Early Dynastic Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), written around 2600–2500 BCE. A temple or palace scribe tracked allocations of beer — the standard institutional ration and wage medium of ancient Sumer — to five named individuals, with amounts ranging from a large allocation of 1 asz 3 barig down to a single barig. Two recipients carry theophoric personal names invoking major Sumerian deities, confirming the institutional religious milieu of the Šuruppak archive. This small palm-sized lenticular tablet is the characteristic form of Fara-period administrative receipts: the everyday accounting slips of the ancient world's first bureaucracies.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Five people received beer, and this tablet kept the tally. The biggest portion — one asz and three barig, a substantial quantity — went to Ur-ni. After that: U2-KA got one asz; E2-ur2-bi-du10 received two barig; Nin-ig-gal one barig; and finally Enlil-a2-mah one asz. Beer was the workhorse of Sumerian institutional finance, distributed as wages, rations, and ceremonial provisions alike. This little clay disc is the bookkeeping that kept it all accountable.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 asz 3 barig of beer, [measured in] sila: Ur-ni. 1 asz: U2-KA. 2 barig: E2-ur2-bi-du10. 1 barig: Nin-ig-gal. 1 asz: Enlil-a2-mah.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) 3(barig@c) kasz sila3 ur2-ni 1(asz@c) u2-KA 2(barig@c) e2-ur2-bi-du10 1(barig@c) nin-ig-gal 1(asz@c) en-lil2-a2-mah
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 067. 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 (P222143) — 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.
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.