Position in chronology
Adab 0799
About this tablet
A small administrative ration or disbursement account from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq) in the Old Akkadian period, roughly the 23rd century BCE. A scribe recorded modest quantities of a dry commodity — almost certainly barley or flour, measured in ban and sila — issued to three named individuals: Lu-dingira (who appears twice), Nanna-...-zu, and Ur-ME. It is a snapshot of everyday provisioning bookkeeping under the Akkadian administration, the kind of routine record that made a centralized economy run.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short distribution list. Lu-dingira received just under 3 ban (29 sila, about 29 liters) of grade-one goods — the commodity name is damaged — and then a further 3 ban in a second entry. Nanna-...-zu (part of his name is broken away) got 1 ban less 1 sila, that is 9 sila, and Ur-ME got 2 ban less 1 sila, or 19 sila. A final damaged line seems to repeat the quality notation. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 3 ban less 1 sila — first quality(?) ... — (for) Lu-dingira; 3 ban(?) — (for) Lu-dingira; 1 ban less 1 sila — (for) Nanna-[...]-zu; 2 ban less 1 sila — (for) Ur-ME; ... first quality(?) ... (reverse uninscribed)
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
3(ban2)#? la2 1(disz) sila3 sag#? x lu2-dingir-ra 3(ban2)#? lu2#-dingir-ra 1(ban2@c) la2 1(disz) sila3 nanna-[...]-zu 2(ban2@c) la2 1(disz) sila3 ur#-ME sag# x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0799. 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 (P217530) — 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.