Position in chronology
Adab 0932
About this tablet
This is a small Sargonic-period account from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), from about the 23rd century BCE. It sets out allotments in descending order of rank: a captain, then a foreman, then the work-troop under them. The first set of allotments is measured as field area for the captain and as grain for the others. The second set, on the reverse, repeats the same pattern at smaller rates. It is a brief glimpse of how the Akkadian-era administration at Adab graded its payments by rank, from officer down to labourer.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The captain gets 2 eše of land (roughly 13 hectares), described as šega-ze barley land. The foreman gets 1 barig of barley and the work crew 3 ban, also listed as šega-ze barley. On the back, a second round of allocations follows the same pattern. The captain's amount is broken off, the foreman gets 2 ban and the crew 1 ban. A closing note says this is barley, but the rest of that line is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. 2 eše (of field) [the word 'field' is left out by the scribe]: šega-ze2 (barley), 2. for the captain (nu-banda3); 3. 1 barig for the foreman; 4. 3 ban for the work-troop: 5. šega-ze2 (barley). Reverse 6. [...] for the captain; 7. 2 ban for the foreman; 8. 1 ban for [the work-troop]; 9. it is barley [...].
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(esze3@c) <GAN2> sze-ga-ze2 nu-banda3 1(barig@c) ugula 3(ban2@c) erin2 sze-ga-ze2 [...] nu-banda3 2(ban2@c) ugula 1(ban2@c) [erin2] sze [...]-am3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0932. 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 (P217576) — 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.