Position in chronology
Adab 0698
About this tablet
A short accounting memorandum from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE). A temple or estate bookkeeper is balancing grain accounts: barley set aside for the regular daily offerings, barley actually on hand, and the resulting shortfall — over ten gur (roughly 2,500 liters) of emmer wheat still owed. Tablets like this show that ancient administrators tracked deficits and carried debts forward, the everyday arithmetic behind Mesopotamia's offering cult and grain economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ledger note: just under 2 ban of barley — two sila and five shekels short of the full measure — earmarked for the regular offerings. This is the barley currently on hand. Outstanding shortfall: 10 gur, 1 barig, 1 ban, and 5 sila of emmer wheat still owed to the account. The rest of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [2 ban] less 2 sila (and) 5 shekels of [barley], gur(-measure): regular offerings (sa₂-du₁₁). Barley that is on hand (gal₂-la). Deficit (la₂-ia₃): 10 gur, 1 barig, 1 ban (and) 5 sila of emmer. (remainder of obverse and the reverse uninscribed)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[2(ban2)] la2 2(disz) sila3 5(asz@c) gin2 [sze] gur sa2-du11 sze max(SI) gal2-la la2-ia3 1(u) 1(barig) 1(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 ziz2 gur
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0698. 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 (P217495) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.