Position in chronology
FTP 092
About this tablet
A grain distribution ledger from the ancient Sumerian city of Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), written around 2500 BCE during the Early Dynastic III period. It records allotments of barley — measured in traditional barig and ban2 capacity units — issued to a series of named individuals, most likely workers or dependants within a temple or palace institution. One recipient is identified by his administrative title 'overseer of the courtyard,' offering a glimpse of the bureaucratic hierarchy behind the distributions. This is the routine bread-and-butter paperwork of early Sumerian city life: thousands of identical-format tablets have been excavated at Šuruppak, making it one of the most thoroughly documented cities of the third millennium BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The following people received grain allotments: Ur-Lugal-DU got 2 barig; Lugal-na-ri-ga got an unreadable quantity (those lines are damaged and partly lost); di-Utu's entry is also partially broken. Then: [sag-A]-DU-ba-sum received 1 barig 3 ban2; Lu2-AB-DU-GA2 received 2 barig 4 ban2; Enlil-pa3, associated with the courtyard, received 1 barig 2 ban2; and a further entry beginning AB received about 1 barig 2 ban2, though that line is damaged. Several lines in the middle are too broken to read. Then Ku5-da — titled 'overseer of the courtyard' — received 2 ban2. Explicitly labeled as barley in the final section: Ur-ig-[gal] received 3 barig; U2-RU-[...] received 2 barig; and Ur-[...] received at least 1 barig. The last entries are partially lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 barig — Ur-Lugal-DU[?] [...] Lugal-na-[ri]-ga [...] [...] di-Utu 1 barig 3 ban2 — [[sag]-A]-DU[?]-ba[?]-sum 2 barig 4 ban2 — Lu2-AB-DU-GA2[?] 1 barig 2 ban2 — Enlil-pa3[?], KISAL (courtyard) 1 barig 2 ban2[?] — AB [...] [...] [...] x KA x [...] 2 ban2 — Ku5-da (Overseer of the courtyard) 3 barig barley — Ur-ig-[gal?] 2 barig — U2-RU-[...] [x +] 1 barig — Ur-[...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(barig@c) ur#-lugal-DU#? [...] lugal#-na#-[ri]-ga# [...] [...] di-utu 1(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) [sag]-[A]-DU#?-ba#?-sum 2(barig@c) 4(ban2@c) lu2-AB-DU-GA2# 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) en-lil2-pa3#? KISAL# 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c)? AB# [...] [...] [x] x KA x 2(ban2@c) ku5-da ugula-KISAL 3(barig@c) sze ur-ig-[gal?] 2(barig@c) u2-RU-[x] [x] 1(barig@c)# ur-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 092. 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 (P222168) — 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.