Position in chronology
Adab 0760
About this tablet
An administrative delivery record from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written during the Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE). It logs modest allotments of bread, beer, fish, and bran issued to two officials: the administrator of the temple of Ašgi — a god closely tied to Adab and nearby Kesh — and the chief cupbearer. Small receipts like this one are the surviving paperwork of daily provisioning in an ancient city's temple and palace economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a supply docket. One bread loaf, two fish, and two jars of beer (the entries are partly broken) went to the administrator of the temple of the god Ašgi. A second allotment — one bread loaf, three measures of bran, four dried split fish, some bundles of greens, and two jars of beer — went to the chief cupbearer. The final line stamps it as an official delivery. Parts of the first entries are damaged and cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(?) bread [...] 2 fish [...] 2 [...] beer, (for) the temple administrator of (the god) Ašgi. 1(?) bread, 3 (measures of) bran, 4(?) split (dried) fish, x bundles of [greens], 2 (jars of) beer, (for) the chief cupbearer. Delivery.
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
1(disz)#? ninda [...] 2(asz@c) ku6 [...] 2(asz@c) [...] kasz sanga aszgi 1(disz)#? ninda 3(asz@c) duh 4(disz)#? ku6 dar-ra x sa-[sar] 2(asz@c) kasz sagi-mah mu-kux(DU)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0760. 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 (P217524) — 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.