Position in chronology
Adab 0910
About this tablet
This is a short account of grain from Adab in southern Iraq, written in Akkadian during the Sargonic period (about 2300–2150 BCE), when the kings of Akkade ruled Mesopotamia. It records a large amount of barley, roughly seventy-one standard units, that is held by a man named Bizaza. The barley is measured by the 'gur of Akkade', the official measure the dynasty imposed on the cities it conquered. The tablet shows imperial standards reaching into a provincial city's everyday bookkeeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records 71 gur, 2 barig and 4 ban of barley, plus a smaller amount that is lost in a break and ends in two-thirds of a sila. The barley is measured by the official Akkade standard. This quantity is the outstanding balance held by Bizaza, and the grain is on hand in Adab.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 71 gur, 2 barig, 4 ban [...] 2/3 sila of barley, by the gur-measure of Akkade: (the) remainder with Bizaza is on hand in Adab.
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
1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 4(ban2@c) [...] 2/3(asz@c) _sila3 sze [gur_] a-ga-de3[] si-tum isz-te4 bi2-za-za i-ba#-sze3 in# adab[]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0910. 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 (P217570) — 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.