Position in chronology
AAS 203
About this tablet
A small round clay tablet from Girsu in southern Iraq, written under the Akkadian empire (roughly 2300–2150 BCE). It is a field-and-barley ledger: a scribe lists plots of farmland measured in iku and sar, with the barley attached to each, and names the men responsible — the son of Adda, a cook named Di-sude, a court official (sukkal) called Ur-Ninkitušgub, and Ur-Inanna, who is posted to the nesag first-fruits offering. Tablets like this are the routine bookkeeping of a temple or palace estate, showing how arable land, grain and personnel were tracked together, and how ordinary staff — even the kitchen cook — held allotments of state land.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A field register. Two iku and thirty sar of barley land go to a man whose name is damaged, the son of Adda; another two sar to Aš-e; a further plot, its size broken away, to Adda-iri. Di-sude the cook holds two iku of barley land, and Ur-Ninkitušgub the minister five or more. Ur-Inanna holds two iku in the "surplus field," and he is assigned to the first-fruits offering service. On the back, a single closing line: land in the same "surplus field," under DAG-gub. Several figures and names are lost to surface damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 iku (GAN₂) 30 sar — barley ... ..., son of Adda [...] 2 sar — barley: Aš-e [n] iku [...] barley Adda-iri 2 iku, barley: Di-sude, the cook 5 (+ n) iku, barley: Ur-Ninkitušgub, the minister (sukkal) 2 iku of the "surplus field" (e₂-diri), its geš-UD — barley: Ur-Inanna, stationed at the nesag-offering. (reverse) Field of the "surplus field" (e₂-diri): DAG-gub.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
2(disz@t)# GAN2 3(u) sar sze (x) x x dumu ad-da [(x)] 2(disz@t) sar sze asz2-e2 [n] GAN2 [...] sze ad#-da-iri 2(disz@t)# GAN2 sze di-sud3-de3 muhaldim 5(disz@t) n GAN2 sze ur-nin-ki-tusz-gub sukkal 2(disz@t) GAN2 e2-diri gesz-UD-bi sze ur-inanna ne-sag-da gub-ba GAN2 e2-diri DAG-gub3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — AAS 203. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: College de France, Paris, France (P100182) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.