Position in chronology
WF 002
About this tablet
An animal-management ledger from Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), written around 2600–2500 BCE during the Early Dynastic period — among the earlier centuries of true cuneiform writing. The tablet registers small groups of donkeys or asses distinguished by breed or quality, each attributed to a named individual (Lumma, NE-lum), alongside a striking note of five men recorded as having 'not departed with them' — almost certainly absentees from an animal drive or transport expedition. A final line places a class of prime-quality ('yellow-green') donkeys under the authority of an official named Ama-gan. The enormous number in the penultimate entry — over nine thousand — either represents a grand institutional herd total or, possibly, a fodder or ration quantity recorded in the same format as the animal counts; the ambiguity is real and has not been resolved in the scholarship.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Four donkeys of the [LAK046-LAK046] quality class were allocated to Lumma; five more of a related type went to NE-lum. Five workers are listed as having failed to leave with the animals — absentees from what was presumably a transport or herding operation. The record then logs a much larger figure: 9,734 animals of the same class (or possibly a large fodder allocation in the same notation system — the tablet does not make this fully clear). The final note closes the account: the prime-quality yellow-green donkeys are the responsibility of Ama-gan.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 donkeys — sig7-[LAK046·LAK046] breed — Lumma; 5 donkeys — [LAK046·LAK046] breed — NE-lum; 5 men who did not go out with [them]; 9,734 [LAK046·LAK046]-type donkeys; yellow-green donkeys — in the care of Ama-gan.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
4(asz@c) ansze sig7-LAK046@v-LAK046@v lum-ma 5(asz@c) ansze-LAK046@v-LAK046@v NE-lumx(LAK218) 5(asz@c) lu2-nu-mu-da-e3 2(szar2@c) 4(gesz'u@c) 2(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) ansze-LAK046@v-LAK046@v ansze-sig7 szu-ama-gan
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 002. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P010959) — 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.