Position in chronology
FTP 106
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, in southern Iraq), dating to around 2600–2500 BCE, recording three parallel disbursements of dairy products — two grades of cream or ghee — against named institutions and officials. The first entry names a temple or estate called the 'House of the Good Shade,' a temple administrator whose name is partly damaged, and a high-status woman, Nin-kin-nir. The two-grade dairy allocation repeats identically across all three entries, a formulaic bookkeeping habit typical of Early Dynastic Sumerian scribes. Tablets like this are the mundane paperwork of the ancient temple economy: methodical, repetitive, written by trained accountants who expected future administrators to audit the figures against stored goods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three identical allocations are listed in sequence. Each one disbursed two units of top-grade cream (the KA-GABA variety) and two units of a secondary cream preparation. The first allocation is tied to an institution called the 'House of the Good Shade,' overseen by a temple administrator whose name is only partially legible, with a woman named Nin-kin-nir also named as a party. The recipient details in the second entry are too damaged to read. The third entry preserves only the commodity amounts — whatever names or institution followed is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineEntry 1: 2 asz of prime dairy cream, KA-GABA [type]; 2 asz of ba-an-ASZ-tur cream; é-gissu-du10 ('House of the Good Shade'); [mes(?)]-sanga-[...] (temple administrator); Nin-kin-nir. Entry 2: 2 asz of prime dairy cream, KA-GABA [type]; 2 asz of [ba-an-ASZ]-tur [cream]; [...] [damaged — signs unreadable]. Entry 3: 2 asz of prime dairy cream, KA-GABA [type]; 2 asz of ba-an-ASZ-tur [cream].
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(asz@c) i3-gara2-sag KA-GABA! 2(asz@c) ba-an-ASZ-tur gara2# e2-gissu-du10 mes#?-sanga-x nin#-kin-nir# 2(asz@c) i3-gara2-sag KA-GABA! 2(asz@c) [ba]-an-[ASZ]-tur [gara2] x [x] 2(asz@c) i3-gara2-sag KA-GABA! 2(asz@c) ba-an-ASZ-tur# [gara2]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — FTP 106. 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 (P222173) — 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.