Position in chronology
Adab 1014
About this tablet
A flour-ration account from Adab in southern Iraq, written under the Akkadian empire (c. 2300–2150 BCE). A scribe records three disbursements of coarse barley flour — measured by the official Agade standard — to a man named Da-bulug, to a group simply called 'the Meluhhans,' and to a man with the Akkadian name Nabi'um, then totals them and books the whole lot as an expenditure for a work gang of porters. The most striking entry is the Meluhhans: Meluhha is the Mesopotamian name for the Indus Valley region, and here a group of them appears drawing rations like any other laborers in a Sumerian city's accounts — a small, concrete trace of long-distance contact between Mesopotamia and South Asia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Flour issued, measured on the Agade standard: 55 litres of coarse barley flour for Da-bulug, for bread; 30 litres for the Meluhhans; 60 litres for Nabi'um. Total: 145 litres of coarse flour. The whole amount is charged out as rations for the porters. Gen-na handled the delivery; Ili signed off as commissioner.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 barig less 5 sila of dabin-flour, (by the) Agade (measure): Da-bulug — bread. 3 ban: they are the Meluhhans. 1 barig: Nabi'um. Total: 2 barig 2 ban 5 sila of dabin-flour, (by the) Agade (measure). Expended (for) the porters. Conveyor: Gen-na. Commissioner(?): Ili.
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(barig@c) la2 5(disz) sila3 dabin a-ga-de3 da-bulug4 ninda 3(ban2@c) me-luh-ha-me 1(barig@c) na-bi2-um szunigin 2(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) 5(disz) sila3 dabin a-ga-de3 zi-ga ug3-IL2 giri3#-gen-na maszkim#?-i3-li2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Adab 1014. 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 (P217616) — 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.