Position in chronology
Adab 0982
About this tablet
A small clay account from Adab in southern Iraq, written under the Akkadian empire (roughly 2300–2150 BCE). Two men, Lugal-nam-mah and E-sukkal-gesi, are credited with quantities of barley — 80 and 10 measures of the large 'great gur' — adding up to a round 90, all of it belonging to an official named Ur-rani, who held the title sukkal, 'minister' or 'vizier'. The scribe closes by noting the grain was received and that this is the reckoning for the year. It is ordinary institutional bookkeeping, but it shows how a provincial administrator's annual grain income was tallied and signed off, name by name.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Eighty great-gur measures of barley from Lugal-nam-mah, and ten from E-sukkal-gesi — ninety in all. The grain belongs to Ur-rani the minister, and it has been received. This is the year's account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[80 gur-mah of barley]: Lugal-nam-mah; 10 (gur-mah): E-sukkal-gesi. Total: 90 gur-mah of barley. Barley of Ur-rani, the vizier (sukkal), received. It is (the account) of the year.
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
[1(gesz2) 2(u@c) sze] gur# mah lugal-nam2#-mah 1(u@c) e2-sukkal#-ge-si szunigin 1(gesz2) 3(u@c) sze gur mah sze ur2-ra-ni sukkal szu ti-a mu#-a-kam#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 0982. 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 (P217604) — 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.