Position in chronology
Adab 0751
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from the Akkadian period (ca. 2300 BCE) found at Adab in southern Iraq. It records quantities of barley set aside as wages for a boatman and money for buying fish, connected with the New Year and with work or traffic on a canal. A priest named Enlilla signed for the goods — for the seventh time, showing this was one installment in an ongoing series of payments. Such tablets are the receipts and ledgers of a temple-centered economy that ran on grain rather than coin.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a receipt. About 5 gur and 3 ban of barley were booked, of which 1 ban went to pay the boatman's fare, along with silver to buy fish. Then another 7 gur, 2 barig, 4 ban and 5 sila of barley, with 1 ban 5 sila again for the boatman's hire, disbursed at the New Year. The running total of the payments comes to 1 barig 4 ban of barley, connected with the Nin-mudu canal. Enlilla, a nu-eš priest, took delivery — this being the seventh installment he had received.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) [5 gur] 3 ban of [barley], 1 ban: hire of the boatman, silver for the purchase of fish; 7 gur 2 barig of barley, 4 ban 5 sila, 1 ban 5 sila: hire of the boat[man] — (at) the New Year. Total: 1 barig 4 ban of barley. (At/for) the Nin-mudu canal. (Reverse) Enlilla, the nu-eš priest, received (it). It is the 7th time.
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
[5(asz) sze] gur 3(ban2)# 1(ban2@c) addir ma2-lah5 ku3-sa szu-ku6 7(asz) 2(barig) sze gur 4(ban2@c) 5(disz)# sila3# 1(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3 addir ma2-[lah5] za3-mu szunigin 1(barig) 4(ban2) sze# i7-nin-mu-du en-lil2-la2 nu-esz3 szu ba-ti [a]-ra2# 7(disz@t)-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0751. 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 (P217520) — 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.