Position in chronology
Adab 0890
About this tablet
This is an Old Akkadian delivery record from the Sumerian city of Adab (modern Bismaya), from around 2300–2150 BCE. It lists how many ropes, or cords of a particular kind, each of about nine people was given. Most people got 3, and a few got 6. It ends with a total and a note that the goods were handed out. A small piece of the everyday paperwork of an administration in the time of the Akkadian empire. It records ordinary equipment and people with a mix of Sumerian and Akkadian names, such as Lugal-im and Šu-ilisu.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Here is who received ropes: 6 to a person whose name is lost, 3 to another whose name is also lost, and 6 to someone whose name ends in '-mer'. Ilulu, Lugal-im, Lani, Kibad, Ur-GAN2-ISZ and Šu-ilisu each got 3. The scribe gives the total as 30 ropes, all handed over to these people. The first lines are damaged, so the kind of rope and the first names can't be fully read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 6 [ropes of KAxKID-type] — [......] 3 [......] 6 — [...]-mer 3 — Ilulu(?) 3 — Lugal-im 3 — Lani 3 — Kibad 3 — Ur-GAN2-ISZ (Reverse) 3 — Šu-ilisu Total: 30 ropes (eš2 |KAxKID|) he gave to them.
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
6(disz)# [esz2 |KAxKID|] 3(disz)# [...] 6(disz) [...]-mer# 3(disz) i3-lu-lu#? 3(disz) lugal-im# 3(disz) la-ni 3(disz) ki-bad 3(disz) ur-GAN2-ISZ 3(disz) szu-i3-li2-su szunigin 3(u) esz2 |KAxKID| an-ne-szum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0890. 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 (P217563) — 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.