Position in chronology
Adab 0773
About this tablet
A barley receipt from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written during the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), when Sargon's dynasty ruled Mesopotamia. It lists four allotments of barley measured in gur (each roughly 300 liters) to named individuals and to porters, and closes with the standard formula that Ur-e, son of Beli-gu, took receipt. It is a snapshot of everyday grain accounting in a provincial administration — the paperwork behind feeding a workforce.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain-issue slip. Šulgi gets 5 gur of barley, a son of Beli-gu gets 8 gur, the porters get 5 gur and 1 barig, and Ur-e gets 7 gur, 1 barig, and 1 ban — altogether a bit over 25 gur, several tons of grain. At the bottom the clerk records that Ur-e, son of Beli-gu, formally received the barley, signing off on the transaction. Nothing more: quantities, names, and a receipt line.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine5 gur of barley — Šulgi; 8 gur of barley — the son of Beli-gu; 5 gur 1 barig — the porter(s) (ug-IL); 7 gur 1 barig 1 ban — Ur-e: Ur-e, the son of Beli-gu, received (it).
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 szul-gi 8(asz) sze gur dumu be-li2-gu2 5(asz) 1(barig) ug3-IL2 7(asz) 1(barig) 1(ban2) ur-e2 dumu be-li2-gu2-ke4 szu ba-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0773. 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 (P217526) — 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.