Position in chronology
Fs Krecher 352-353 20
About this tablet
An administrative personnel list from Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), dating to the Early Dynastic period, roughly 2600–2500 BCE. Each surviving entry records one individual by name — the cuneiform equivalent of a roster or register. Šuruppak produced one of the largest archives of Early Dynastic tablets known, and lists of named individuals like this one are characteristic of its bureaucratic output: small, practical records tracking workers, officials, or ration recipients. This particular tablet is too fragmentary to identify which institution or transaction these names belong to, but its form is entirely typical of the Fara administrative tradition.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists a series of individuals, each counted as one person: Ig-[...], Mes-lu, Pa4-UL4-gal, Sud3-ki-na, Mes-AN-Pa3, and AK-[...]. The final line is too damaged to read. It is essentially a roster — a short roll of names, the kind of list a Sumerian administrator would keep to track who belonged to a work group, household, or ration entitlement.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 Ig-x-[x] Mes-lu 1 Pa4-UL4-gal 1 Sud3-ki-na[?] 1 Mes[?]-AN-Pa3[?] [1] AK-x-[x] Da[?] x x? UD[?] [...]
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@f) ig-x-[x] mes-lu 1(asz@f) pa4-UL4-gal 1(asz@f) sud3-ki#-na#? 1(asz@f) mes#?-AN-pa3#? [1(asz@f)] AK#-x-[x] da#? x x? UD#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC) ?) — Fs Krecher 352-353 20. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ist Š 0027 (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Šuruppak (mod. Fara) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P480579). 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.