Position in chronology
Adab 0973
About this tablet
This is a short storehouse record from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, written in the Akkadian period (about 2300–2150 BCE). It lists foodstuffs taken out of storage: a large amount of barley, some coarse flour, two kinds of pulses and a little coriander. They are recorded under a man named Enannatum and dated to a month of the local calendar. Tablets like this belong to the large Sargonic-period archive from Adab and show how institutions tracked everyday food stores down to single measures.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued from stores: 29 gur, 1 barig and 5 sila of barley (the word 'barley' is broken but can be restored); 3 barig, 1 ban and 6 sila of coarse barley flour; 1 ban and 2 sila of large legumes; an amount of small legumes (the number is lost); and 3 sila of coriander. Enannatum is responsible for the issue. It is dated to the second, 'later' month of Bahir.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 29 gur 1 barig 5 sila of [barley]; 3 barig 1 ban 6 sila of dabin flour; 1 ban (variant ban sign) 2 sila of large legumes (gu-gal); [n sila] of small legumes (gu-tur); 3 sila of coriander. Reverse Issued (out). Enannatum. Month: 'later' Bahir.
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
2(u) 9(asz) 1(barig) 5(disz) sila3 [sze] gur 3(barig) 1(ban2) 6(disz) sila3 dabin# 1(ban2@c) 2(disz) sila3 gu2-gu2 gal [n sila3] gu2-gu2 tur 3(disz) sila3 sze-lu2 e3 en-an-na-tum2 iti ba-hi-ir egir
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0973. 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 (P217599) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.