Position in chronology
Adab 0825
About this tablet
A small Old Akkadian receipt from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), around 2300–2150 BCE, now in the Oriental Institute in Chicago. It records barley belonging to a merchant's account — some two and a half gur of grain — together with five liters set aside as the boatman's ferry charge for moving it along the Nin-mudu canal, with a man named Ur-mes involved and a temple official, Enlila the nueš-priest, signing for delivery. Tiny documents like this are how we know that Mesopotamian grain moved by water, and that the canal freight was paid in the same grain it carried.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Merchant's account: 2 gur 2 barig of barley, plus 1 ban 5 sila — with 5 sila deducted as the boatman's ferry charge. Handled by Ur-mes, the suda'um, on the Nin-mudu canal. Received by Enlila, the nueš-priest.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Account of) the merchant: 2 gur 2 barig of barley, 1 ban 5 sila; 5 sila — the ferry-fee (addir) of the boatman. Ur-mes, the suda'um; (at?) the canal Nin-mudu. Enlila, the nueš-priest, received (it).
Our translation engine — Opus 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
dam-gar3 2(asz) 2(barig) sze gur 1(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3 5(disz) sila3 addir ma2-lah5 ur-mes su-da-um 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 0825. 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 (P217538) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.