Position in chronology
Adab 0821
About this tablet
A small clay account from Adab (modern Bismaya) in southern Iraq, written under the kings of Akkad, roughly 2300 BCE. It lists barley paid out of the town's treasury-storehouse: a large shipment of 30 gur loaded onto a boat, then allotments to three named men, a goldsmith, and a gang of female workers, closed off with a grand total and the accountant's formula "barley expended." It is the ordinary bookkeeping of a Mesopotamian institution — grain moving by river and by ration list — and a reminder that most cuneiform writing exists because someone had to account for stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Thirty gur of barley (the large measure) were loaded onto the boat. The rest went out as allotments: twenty gur to Meme, twenty to A'a'a, two gur and two barig to Enšu, five gur as rations for the women workers, two barig to Lu-unu, and a further amount to KU the goldsmith. Total disbursed: seventy-eight gur of barley, all of it booked as expenditure from the treasury storehouse.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine30 gur-mah of barley — loaded into the boat. 20 (gur): Meme; 20 (gur): A'a'a; 2 gur 2 barig: Enšu; 5 gur: barley rations of the female workers; 2 barig: Lu-unu; KU, the goldsmith. Total: 78 (i.e. 80 less 2) gur-mah of barley. Barley expended (from) the treasury storehouse.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
3(u) sze gur mah ma2-a ab-si 2(u) me-me 2(u) a-a-a 2(asz) 2(barig) en-szu 5(asz) sze-ba geme2 2(barig) lu2-unu KU ku3-sig17 szunigin 1(gesz2) 2(u) la2 2(asz) sze gur mah sze zi-ga e2-nig2-gur11 ganun
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0821. 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 (P217537) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.