Position in chronology
Adab 0965 + 1016-1
About this tablet
This is a small receipt from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written in Sumerian during the Akkadian empire, around 2300–2200 BCE. It records emmer wheat, measured in the large 'royal' gur, that was portioned out to a few people and set aside as regular food offerings for the gods. A scribe signs for the whole amount. The tablet is made of two pieces that were catalogued separately at the Oriental Institute in Chicago and later found to join. It shows the everyday bookkeeping that supplied temple offerings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists how a quantity of emmer wheat was split among a few people. The first entry is broken, and so is most of the second, whose recipient's name ends in '-tu'. Atu got 2 barig, and Lalla got an amount that is now lost. Altogether that comes to 4 gur and 2 barig of emmer, measured by the large gur, for the regular offerings to the gods. Enlil the scribe signed for receiving it in the month of Še-sag-sa-ga.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse [...] emmer, (by the) large gur; [... to ...]-tu; 2 barig: (to) Atu; [n]: (to) Lalla. Reverse Total: 4 gur 2 barig of emmer, (by the) large gur, [regular] offerings for the gods(?). Enlil, the scribe, received (it). Month: Še-sag-sa-ga.
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
[...] ziz2 gur mah [...]-tu 2(barig@c) a-tu [n] lal3-la szunigin 4(asz@c) 2(barig@c) ziz2 gur mah [sa2]-du11 dingir-re-ne-sze3#? en-lil2 dub-sar-e szu# ba-ti iti# sze-sag-sa6-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0965 + 1016-1. 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 (P217593) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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