Position in chronology
WF 151
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), dating to roughly 2600–2450 BCE, recording the distribution of copper measured in minas to a set of temples and individuals. Larger shares of 20 minas go to institutional recipients — including temples of the storm god Iškur and a house called é-Ḫursag — while five named individuals each receive the smaller allocation of 4 minas. The final line sums everything to exactly 140 minas, confirming this is a balanced ledger entry of the kind that made Šuruppak one of the best-documented early administrative centers in Mesopotamia. Two signs in the body of the list are too damaged to read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a copper distribution in Šuruppak. Six recipients — the storm-god Iškur's temple, the Ḫursag house, the lord's house, the é-zi-pa-e₃ institution, and individuals named a-NI-NI and a-si₄ — each received 20 minas of copper. Five others — Ur-gibil, Amar-KISAL-NUN, a man identified as the 'son-of-the-prince plus šita,' a woman called munus-ki-nu-zu, and a šita official — received 4 minas apiece. Two entries in the middle of the list are too damaged to read. The closing line confirms the grand total: 140 minas of copper.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine20 minas of copper — a-NI-NI 20 [minas] — é-Ḫursag 20 [minas] — é-en-ra 20 [minas] — Iškur 20 [minas] — é-zi[-pa-e₃] 4 [minas] — Ur-gibil 4 [minas] — Amar-KISAL-NUN 4 [minas] — [Dumu-x-]NUN-šita 4 [minas] — munus-ki-nu-zu 4 [minas] — šita 20 [minas] — a-si₄ [x x — illegible] Total: 140 minas of copper
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(u@c) ma-na uruda a-NI-NI 2(u@c) e2-hur-sag 2(u@c) e2-en-ra 2(u@c) iszkur 2(u@c) e2-zi#-pa-e3 4(asz@c) ur-gibil6 4(asz@c) amar-KISAL-NUN 4(asz@c) |DUMUxNUN|-szita 4(asz@c) munus-ki-nu-zu 4(asz@c) szita 2(u@c) a-si4 x x 2(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) ma-na uruda
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIa (ca. 2600-2500 BC)) — WF 151. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (P011109) — 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.