Position in chronology
Adab 0752
About this tablet
A short accounting memo from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written in the Old Akkadian period (about 2300 BCE). A temple bookkeeper is tallying shortfalls of bread — measured, unusually, by weight in minas — owed against five sanctuaries of the city: the Emah (the great temple of the mother goddess), the E-GAN-ISH, and the shrines of Ashgi, Ishkur, and Inanna. The scribe's arithmetic checks out exactly: the five entries sum to 39 2/3 minas, written as '40 minas less 1/3'. A tiny window into how ancient temple economies audited their deficits.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a deficit report. The Emah temple is short 7 minas of bread; the E-GAN-ISH house is short 15; the temple of Ashgi, 6; the temple of Ishkur, 8 and two-thirds; and the temple of Inanna, 3. Bottom line, carried over to the back of the tablet: the total shortfall comes to 40 minas of bread less one-third — that is, 39 2/3 minas outstanding. The final line simply confirms: this is the amount still owed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) Deficit: 7 minas of bread — (of the) Emah (temple); 15 — (of the) E-GAN-ISH (house); [6] — (of the temple of) Ashgi; 8 2/3 — (of the temple of) Ishkur; 3 — (of the temple of) Inanna. (reverse) Total: 40 minas less 1/3 (mina) of bread. It is the deficit.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
la2-ia3 7(asz@c) ma-na ninda e2-mah 1(u) 5(disz) e2-GAN2-ISZ [6(disz)] aszgi2 8(disz) 2/3(disz) iszkur 3(asz@c) inanna# szunigin 4(u) ma-na la2 1/3(disz) ninda la2-ia3-am3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0752. 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 (P217521) — 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.