Position in chronology
WF 145
About this tablet
An administrative tablet from the ancient city of Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), dated to the Early Dynastic period, around 2600–2500 BCE. It records four batches of dates — 800 units in total — each described as a 'standard allocation,' distributed to four different institutional recipients or ceremonial occasions: an entity associated with the city of Adab, an eagle-related institution (partly broken), a courtyard festival, and a senior-personnel category. Tablets like this are the routine paperwork of a sophisticated Sumerian city bureaucracy: even the disbursement of fruit was carefully measured, categorized, and pressed into clay for the archive.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eight hundred units of dates, parceled out in four standard allotments. The first — 170 units — goes to the Adab institution in the ha-ur2 category. The second and largest — 350 units — is destined for the eagle institution, though the second word in that entry is damaged and cannot be read. Then 100 units for the courtyard festival. The fourth and final entry assigns 180 units to the senior officials, the 'great people.' A straightforward distribution record: dates measured, categories noted, transaction closed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine170 dates — standard allocation — Adab, ha-ur2 350 dates — standard allocation — eagle [...] 100 dates — standard allocation — festival of the courtyard 180 dates — standard allocation — gal-UN
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) 5(u@c) pesz3 nig2-du3 adab ha-ur2 5(gesz2@c) 5(u@c) pesz3 nig2-du3 ti8 [x?] 1(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) pesz3 nig2-du3 ezem kisal 3(gesz2@c) pesz3 nig2-du3 gal-UN
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 145. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011103) — 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.