Position in chronology
Adab 0666
About this tablet
A small Old Akkadian receipt from Adab (modern Bismaya), written around 2300–2200 BCE. It lists three worked objects of a single weighed material, gives the weight of each, adds them up, and records that a merchant named Du-ga-ni handed them over to the institution. The arithmetic is exact — 48 + 36 + 30 shekels = 114, i.e. 'two mina minus six shekels' — which shows a scribe checking his own totals, the everyday discipline of Mesopotamian accounting.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Three items received, all of the same material: two of one type, weighing 48 shekels and one-third of a mina plus 16 shekels respectively, and a third piece weighing half a mina. Total weight: two mina less six shekels — about 950 grams. Delivered by Du-ga-ni, merchant.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 ku-object of the si-sa₂ type, of ni-na — its weight: 50 minus 2 shekels (= 48 shekels). 1 ku-object of the si-sa₂ type, of ni-na — its weight: 1/3 (mina and) [16 shekels]. 1 SAG×U-object of ni-na — its weight: 1/2 mina. Total: 2 mina minus 6 shekels of ni-na. Du-ga-ni, the merchant. Delivery (mu-kux).
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
1(asz@c) ku si-sa2 ni-na ki-la2-bi 5(u) la2 2(asz@c) gin2 1(asz@c) ku# si-sa2 ni-na ki-la2-bi 1/3(disz) [1(u) 6(disz) gin2] 1(asz@c) |SAGxU| ni-na ki-la2-bi 1/2(asz@c) ma-na szunigin 2(asz@c) ma-na la2 6(disz) gin2 ni-na# du11-ga-ni dam-gar3 mu-kux(DU)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0666. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P217480) — 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.