Position in chronology
WF 064
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic III administrative tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), dating to approximately 2600–2500 BCE. It tracks disbursements of sealed goods — most likely standard-measure jars of grain or beer — to three named individuals: Mes-u4-ba, Nin-ul4-gal, and a shepherd called AN-ur2-sze3. The closing lines give running totals drawn from the palace storehouse (e2-gal), situating this document within the palace redistribution economy of one of Mesopotamia's earliest urban centers. Notably, the scribe already distinguishes between goods still held under seal and goods already consumed, a precision that anticipates centuries of later Mesopotamian accountancy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ten units of sealed goods were assigned to Mes-u4-ba. Nin-ul4-gal received four sealed units, with one additional unit recorded as already consumed. The shepherd AN-ur2-sze3 received two sealed units. Three further sealed units — possibly of barley — and one unit drawn from an inner allocation are also entered. The totals come to 23 units out of the palace stores and 16 units from a second category whose designation is now too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 [units] sealed in storage — Mes-u4-ba; 4 [units] sealed in storage, 1 [unit] consumed — Nin-ul4-gal; 2 [units] sealed in storage — AN-ur2-sze3, shepherd; 3 [units] of barley(?) sealed in storage, 1 [unit] inner allocation — 23 [units]: palace; 16 [units]: [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(u@c) lid2-ga mes-u4-ba 4(asz@c) lid2-ga 1(asz@c) nag-du11-ga nin-ul4-gal 2(asz@c) lid2-ga AN-ur2-sze3 sipa 3(asz@c) sze? lid2-ga 1(asz@c) sza3-gu2-ba 2(u@c) 3(asz@c) e2-gal 1(u@c) 6(asz@c) x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 064. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011021) — 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.