Position in chronology
Adab 0863
About this tablet
This is a Sargonic-period record from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, from around 2300–2200 BCE. It lists amounts of flax, measured in talents or loads, next to the names of people and a few job titles: a courier, the overseer of the potters, farmers and a chief farmer. The total, 37, is noted as loaded onto a boat, so the tablet seems to track flax collected from individuals for shipment by river. A few more entries were added after the total. Flax was the raw material for linen and a key crop, and this small receipt shows how an Akkadian-era office moved it around.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Flax shipment list. Kunše supplied 5 talents of flax, Ursu the courier 2, Lugal-ezem, overseer of the potters, 3, Azugal 3, Lugal-e-maše the farmer 5, and Nita-x 10. The next few entries are damaged: someone gave about 2, a chief farmer named Gal-something gave 3, and another person gave about 1. In total, 37 talents of flax are loaded on the boat. Below the total come a few more entries: 10 from a person whose name can't be read, a name starting Amur-, and 2 from Ur-kuš.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. 5 talents of flax: 2. Kunše; 3. 2: Ursu, the courier; 4. 3: Lugal-ezem, overseer of the potters; 5. 3: Azugal; 6. 5: Lugal-e-maše, the farmer; 7. 10: Nita-x; 8. 2(?): [...]; 9. 3: Gal-[...], the chief farmer; 10. 1(?): [...]. Reverse(?) 11. Total: 37 [talents of] flax, 12. loaded on the boat. 13. 10: ni-x-x; 14. Amur-[...]; 15. 2: Ur-kuš.
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
5(asz@c) gu gu2 kun-sze3 2(asz@c) ur-su sukkal 3(asz@c) lugal-ezem nu-banda3 bahar2 3(asz@c) a-zu-gal 5(asz@c) lugal-e2-masz-e engar 1(u@c) nita-x 2(asz@c)#? [...] 3(asz@c) gal [...] engar-mah# 1(asz@c)#? [...] szunigin 3(u@c) 7(asz@c) [gu] gu2 ma2-a ab-gal2 1(u@c) ni x x a-mur-[...] 2(asz@c) ur-kusz2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0863. 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 (P217551) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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