Position in chronology
Adab 0826
About this tablet
A barley-ration list from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), written under the Akkadian empire around 2300–2150 BCE. A scribe recorded fixed grain allotments — mostly 2 barig, about 120 liters each, a normal monthly ration — for a handful of named men and office-holders: the chief governor, the head boatman, the head smith, a smith called Ur-kal, a barber, a donkey herdsman, and three others. Documents like this are the payroll of an ancient city: they show us who mattered in the local administration and what a month of work was worth in grain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Grain issued: 120 liters each to the chief governor, the head boatman, the head smith, and the smith Ur-kal; 60 liters to En-šu the barber and 60 to Diku, who looks after the donkeys; then 120 liters each to Kašda the resident, to Igi-du, and to Su-si. Nine entries, nine allotments — a month's barley for the men on the city's books.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 barig (of barley): the chief ensi (governor). 2 barig: the chief boatman. 2 barig: the chief smith. 2 barig: Ur-kal, the smith. 1 barig: En-šu, the barber. [1 barig]: Diku, herdsman of donkeys. 2 barig: Kašda, the resident. 2 barig: Igi-du. 2 barig: Su-si.
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
2(barig) ensi2-gal 2(barig) ma2-lah5-gal 2(barig) simug-gal 2(barig) ur-kal simug 1(barig@c) en-szu szu-i [1(barig)] di-ku5 sipa ansze 2(barig) kasz-da tusz-a 2(barig) igi-du 2(barig) su-si
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0826. 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 (P217539) — 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.