Position in chronology
Adab 0753
About this tablet
A small ration or grain-disbursement account from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written during the Akkadian period (about 2300 BCE). A scribe lists measured amounts of grain — one or two ban (roughly 10–20 liters) each — issued to named individuals and to professionals: the chief priest-administrator of the storm-god Iškur's temple and a crew of boatmen. One batch is flagged with the Akkadian word for 'choice quality,' a nice glimpse of Sumerian bookkeeping absorbing Akkadian vocabulary under the new imperial administration.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain-issue ledger. Lugal-abba-iri gets two ban of grain (about 20 liters); Lu-ašgi, Ur-nigar, Šu-illa, and probably Lugal-ka each get one ban — one entry in between is too damaged to read. A note marks the grain as 'choice quality.' Then the temple administrator of the storm-god Iškur receives one ban and six sila (about 16 liters), and the boatmen collectively receive one ban. The last line, mostly broken away, names one more recipient, Ur-pirigga.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 2 ban (of barley): Lugal-abba-iri(?), 1 ban: Lu-ašgi, 1 ban: Ur-nigar, 1 ban: Šu-illa [...], ... [...] (two illegible signs), 1 ban: [Lugal]-ka(?), — choice quality (nisqu) — 1 ban 6 sila: the temple administrator (sanga) of Iškur, 1 ban: the boatmen, [...]: Ur-pirigga.
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@c) lugal-abba2#-iri#? 1(ban2@c) lu2-aszgi 1(ban2@c) ur-nigar# 1(ban2@c) szu#-il2-la [...] x x [...] 1(ban2@c) [lugal]-ka#? ni-is-qu2 1(ban2@c) 6(disz) sila3 sanga iszkur# 1(ban2@c) ma2-lah5-me [...] ur-pirig-ga2#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0753. 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 (P217522) — 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.