Position in chronology
WF 094
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, Iraq), dated to approximately 2600–2500 BCE, tallying male laborers — described as 'stationed men' — distributed across six major cities of ancient Sumer: Uruk, Adab, Nippur, Lagash, Šuruppak itself, and Umma. The reverse closes with a grand total under the heading 'men stationed in Sumer,' invoking the whole of the southern Mesopotamian heartland. This is among the oldest surviving multi-city labor rosters in human history, showing that Šuruppak's scribal administration tracked a coordinated workforce across the entire city-state network of Sumer — a remarkable bureaucratic reach for the mid-third millennium BCE. A minor arithmetic discrepancy between the sum of the six individual entries (715) and the stated grand total (650) is noted and may reflect a scribal error or an unresolved nuance in the subtraction notation.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists the number of male workers posted at six cities across Sumer: 122 at Uruk, 215 at Adab, 74 at Nippur, 110 at Lagash, 66 at Šuruppak, and 128 at Umma. On the reverse, the grand total is recorded as 650 men, all described as 'stationed men of Sumer' — a single administrative headline covering the entire regional labor force tracked by this account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine122 workmen — men stationed at Uruk; 215 — Adab; 74 — Nippur; 110 — Lagash; 66 — Šuruppak; 128 — Umma. Grand total: 650 workmen [600 + 60, minus 10], men stationed in Sumer.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(gesz2@c) 2(asz@c) gurusz lu2 durun unug 3(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) 5(asz@c) adab 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) nibru 1(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) lagaszx(|NU11.BUR.MUSZEN|) 1(gesz2@c) 6(asz@c) szuruppak 2(gesz2@c) 8(asz@c) umma an-sze3-gu2 1(gesz'u@c) 1(gesz2@c) la2 1(u@c) gurusz lu2 durun ki-en-gi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 094. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011051) — 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.