Position in chronology
Adab 0733
About this tablet
A small barley account from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written during the Old Akkadian period (about 2300–2200 BCE). Three men — Namtur, Ur-me, and Ur-lam — are each credited or charged with a quantity of barley, measured in the 'gur of Agade', the standardized capacity measure introduced under the Akkadian empire, and the scribe adds it all up at the end. Tablets like this are the receipts and ledger slips of one of the world's first territorial states, and the use of the imperial Agade standard shows the reach of Akkadian administrative reform into provincial cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. Namtur is down for just under 3 gur of barley — 3 gur minus 1 barig — measured by the official Agade standard. Ur-me is down for the same amount, 3 gur minus 1 barig. Ur-lam accounts for 2 gur and 4 barig. The bookkeeper totals it up at the bottom: 8 gur and 2 barig of barley in all — and the arithmetic checks out exactly.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3 gur less 1 barig of barley, in the Agade (gur-measure) — Namtur; 3 gur less 1 barig of barley — Ur-[me]; 2 gur 4 barig of barley — Ur-lam; Total: 8 gur 2 barig of barley.
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
3(asz) la2 1(barig@c) sze gur a-ga-de3 nam-tur 3(asz) la2 1(barig@c) sze gur ur-[me] 2(asz) 4(barig) sze gur ur-lam szunigin 8(asz) 2(barig) sze gur
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0733. 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 (P217514) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
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.