Position in chronology
Adab 0944
About this tablet
This is a receipt from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written around 2300–2200 BCE in the time of the Akkad dynasty. It records amounts of emmer wheat, measured in the large 'big gur' unit, that were set aside as regular offerings for the gods. A scribe, probably named Enlil(a), signs for having received the grain. Contributors, or the people the grain is booked against, include Šu-Eštar and Puzur-Mama, brother of Imarum. The tablet is a small example of how temple supplies were handed over and recorded in the Akkadian period.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt for emmer wheat. About 6 gur, measured by the big gur, came from or was booked to Šu-Eštar (a word after his name is unclear). A further 3 barig came from Puzur-Mama, brother of Imarum, though part of that line is broken. The total is roughly 6 gur and 3 barig of emmer, big gur measure. The grain is for the regular offerings to the gods, and the rest of that line is lost. Enlil, the scribe, received it.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [6?] gur (big gur) of emmer wheat, 2. emmer of Šu-Eštar, ga-x; 3. 3 barig of emmer: 4. [...] Puzur-Mama, 5. brother of Imarum. Reverse 6. [Grand] total: 6? gur [3 barig] of emmer, big gur, 7. regular offerings of the gods [...]. 8. En[lil], the scribe, 9. [re]ceived (it).
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(asz)?] ziz2 gur mah# ziz2 szu-esz18-dar ga-x 3(barig) ziz2 [...] puzur4-ma-ma szesz# i-ma-ru-um [szu] nigin2 6(asz)? [3(barig)] ziz2 gur mah sa2-du11 dingir-e-ne-[...] en-[lil2] dub-sar [szu] ba-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0944. 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 (P217582) — 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.