Position in chronology
FTP 078
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic ration tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), written around 2600–2500 BCE. Three people — one named Lu-iri-sari'g, one Ur-Ur, and one identified simply as 'the man of Adab' — each receive a single jar of barley-beer, while a fourth entry, 'the man of Umma,' appears at the end without a surviving quantity line. Such tablets are the administrative backbone of the Šuruppak archive, recording the routine disbursement of food and drink to laborers, officials, or travelers. The mention of men from Adab and Umma, both significant Sumerian cities, suggests that visitors or delegates from neighboring urban centers were being provisioned at Šuruppak's expense.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three people each got a single jar of barley-beer from the Šuruppak stores: Lu-iri-sari'g received one TAR-jar; so did Ur-Ur; and the man from Adab got one ba-an-ASZ measure. A fourth person — the man from Umma — is listed at the end, but if he received an allocation too, that line is either lost or was never written: the tablet ends there.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLu-iri-sari'g: 1 TAR-jar of barley-beer. Ur-Ur: 1 TAR-[jar] of barley-beer. Lu-Adab: 1 ba-an-ASZ-measure of barley-beer. Lu-Umma.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
lu2#-iri-sa12-rig7# 1(asz@c) dug-TAR |SZE+TIN| UR-UR 1(asz@c) dug-[TAR] |SZE+TIN|# lu2-adab 1(asz@c) ba-an-ASZ |SZE+TIN| lu2-umma
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 078. 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 (P222154) — 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.