Position in chronology
Fs Krecher 341-342 10
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, in southern Iraq), dated to roughly 2600–2500 BCE. It records two parallel allocations or accountings of livestock — each entry comprising a male donkey, a female donkey, and fifteen sheep — linked to named individuals or officials, with a quantity of weighed copper appearing in the second block. Šuruppak's archives are among the earliest organized bodies of Sumerian recordkeeping, and tablets like this one show that city-state bureaucrats were already tracking animal herds and metal weights with systematic precision. Several lines are heavily damaged or eroded, and key readings remain uncertain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two officials or herders — one apparently named Lugal-inim-ma, the second's name only partially readable — are each recorded against a similar set of assets: one male donkey, one female donkey, and fifteen sheep, along with some additional entries too broken to read clearly. The second official's account adds five minas of copper (roughly 2.5 kg) measured or weighed in a specific way. The tablet closes with a line that may indicate a steppe or field destination, but it is too damaged to translate with confidence.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 Lugal-inim-ma(?) 1 Sud-[...]-[...] 1 donkey, [young/prime type] 1 jenny (female donkey) [1]0+5 sheep [n] selected [animals(?)] [...] ... 1 SAG×HA, DI, [...] 1 donkey, [young/prime type] 1 jenny (female donkey) [1]0+5 sheep 5 minas of copper, [weighed as] tun3-la2 [...] steppe(?)-si(?)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) lugal#?-inim#?-ma#? 1(asz@c) sud3-x-x 1(asz@c) ansze# SZUL# 1(asz@c) eme3 1(u)? 5(asz@c) udu [n] sag-ku5#? [...] x 1(asz@c) |SAGxHA| DI x 1(asz@c) ansze SZUL 1(asz@c) eme3 1(u)? 5(asz@c) udu 5(asz@c) ma-na uruda tun3-la2 edin#?-si#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC) ?) — Fs Krecher 341-342 10. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ist Š 0692 (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Šuruppak (mod. Fara) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P480574). 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.