Position in chronology
Adab 0953
About this tablet
This is a grain account from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written in the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, about 2300–2150 BCE. A scribe recorded large amounts of barley and emmer wheat taken out of stores, and gave a final total of more than 340 gur. That is roughly 100,000 litres of grain. The amounts are measured in the 'gur of Akkade', the standard unit that the kings of Akkad imposed. This shows the empire's official measures being used in a provincial city's bookkeeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Grain issued: [some amount, with the first figure broken] plus 31 gur 1 barig of barley, measured in the standard Akkade gur, and 48 gur of emmer wheat. The scribe wrote 48 as '50 minus 2'. The next entry is broken. Only the end of a name or place ending in '-gu' survives, and the entry is marked as spent. Total: 342 gur 1 barig 4 ban and 5 sila of barley, in Akkade gur.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse [...] 31 gur 1 barig of barley, (in) Akkade gur; 48 (literally 50 minus 2) gur of emmer; Reverse [...]-gu2: expended. Total: 342 gur 1 barig 4 ban2 5 sila of barley, [gur] of Akkade.
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
[...] 3(u@c) 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze gur a-ga-de3 5(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) ziz2 gur [...]-gu2# zi-ga szunigin 5(gesz2) 4(u) 2(asz) 1(barig) 4(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 sze [gur] a#-ga-de3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0953. 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 (P217587) — 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.