Position in chronology
Adab 0793
About this tablet
An administrative receipt from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written during the Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE). It records a sizeable quantity of barley plus a small extra amount set aside as the boatman's fare — grain was moved by river, and shipping costs were booked right into the account. The barley passes through the hands of named individuals, including household servant women and a priest called Enlila, who formally receives it. It is a small but vivid window into how grain, canals, boats, and temple personnel were knitted together in one of the world's earliest bureaucracies.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: ten gur and one barig of barley, plus two ban charged as the boatman's shipping fee. The consignment involves Ur-dingir-tur and, in a damaged passage, the household's servant women, in connection with the Nin-mudu canal. Enlila, the nueš-priest, has taken delivery of the goods. In modern terms: a warehouse slip logging a barley shipment sent by boat along the canal, with the freight cost itemized and the receiving official signed off at the bottom.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 gur (and) 1 barig of barley, 2 ban: the fare/hire of the boatman. Ur-dingir-tur [...] the female workers of the household [...] (at) the canal Nin-[mudu]. Enlila, the nueš-priest, 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
1(u) sze gur 1(barig) 2(ban2@c) addir ma2-lah5 ur-dingir-tur [...] geme2-e2 [...] i7-nin#-[mu-du] en-lil2-la2 nu-esz3 szu ba-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0793. 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 (P217529) — 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.