Position in chronology
Adab 0878
About this tablet
This is a small barley-ration list from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written in the time of the Akkadian empire (about 2300–2150 BCE). It lists seven workers and the monthly grain each one got. The two named men, a carpenter and a potter, each get a larger share than the five women. The scribe adds up the total at the end, and the numbers are correct. Lists like this show how big households paid their skilled craftsmen and female workers in grain, and how differently they paid men and women.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley rations for the month of Akiti. The carpenter A-a gets 4 bán, and so does the potter Bu-ša-ti-e. Those are the men. Five women get 3 bán each: A-ra-ne-x, and four more whose names are partly broken off (they begin Im-, Zi-, Na- and Du-). Total: two men at 4 bán each and five women at 3 bán each, which comes to 4 barig of barley minus 1 bán.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 4 bán (of barley): A-a, the carpenter; 4 bán: Bu-ša-ti-e, the potter; (these are) men. 3 bán: A-ra-ne-x; 3 bán: Im-[...]; 3 bán: Zi-[...]; [3 bán]: Na-[...]; [3 bán]: Du-[...]; (these are) wo[men]. Reverse Total: 2 men at 4 bán (each), 5 women at 3 bán (each). Their barley rations: 4 barig less 1 bán. Month: Akiti.
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
4(ban2@c) a-a nagar 4(ban2@c) bu-sza3-ti-e bahar2 gurusz-me 3(ban2@c) a-ra-ne-x 3(ban2@c) im-[...] 3(ban2@c) zi#-[...] [3(ban2@c)] na-[...] [3(ban2@c)] du-[...] geme2#-[me] szunigin 2(disz@t) gurusz 4(ban2@c) 5(disz@t)# geme2 3(ban2@c) sze-ba-bi 4(barig@c) la2 1(ban2@c) iti a2-ki-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0878. 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 (P217557) — 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.