Position in chronology
TSŠ 0835
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Šuruppak (modern Fara, southern Iraq), written around 2500 BCE. It records a small tally of cattle — an ox, a calf of some special designation, and a cow — distributed among or received from named individuals and institutions. The designations in the lower entries, including 'House Surpassing the Mountain' and 'Pure Great Place,' read more like temple or shrine names than personal names, suggesting livestock is being tracked across a handful of religious or administrative bodies. One of countless working documents that kept Šuruppak's institutional economy running day to day.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Seven animals in six entries. One ox is credited to Mes-IGI-NU2; one 'new-moon calf' — either a ritually designated animal or a calf belonging to someone of that name — is noted next; then one cow, with no keeper named. After that, two animals go to the 'House Surpassing the Mountain,' one to the 'Pure Great Place,' and one to 'Mother of AN-RU.' No explanation of purpose, no totals, no date — just quantities and names, the bare minimum a scribe needed to keep track.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[1] ox — Mes-IGI-NU2 1 amar-u4-sakar [new-moon calf; or: 1 for Amar-u4-sakar] 1 cow 2 — E2-kur-diri ["House Surpassing the Mountain"] 1 — Ki-gal-ku3[?] ["Pure Great Place"] 1 — Ama-AN-RU
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)] gu4 mes-IGI-NU2 1(asz@c) amar-u4-sakar 1(asz@c) ab2 2(asz@c) e2-kur-diri 1(asz@c) ki-gal-ku3# 1(asz@c) ama-AN-RU
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED I-II (ca. 2900-2700 BC) ?) — TSŠ 0835. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ist Š 0835 (Arkeoloji Müzeleri, Istanbul, Turkey) — from Šuruppak (mod. Fara) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P010916). 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.