Position in chronology
Anonymous 270828
About this tablet
An accounting tablet of the Old Akkadian period, probably from Umma in southern Iraq, recording an enormous tally — 14,148 units — connected with a field belonging to an estate called E-šula. The formula 'returned to hand' marks the goods or the account as formally received and settled, and the personal names that follow (A-maḫ, Ur-Ninmug) are the officials or witnesses involved. It is a glimpse of the meticulous bookkeeping that ran the agricultural economy of Mesopotamia over 4,200 years ago, its huge round number-impressions still pressed deep into the clay.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: a total of 14,148 items (counted as 3×3,600 + 5×600 + 5×60 + 50, minus 2) has been handed over in connection with the field of the E-šula estate, and the delivery has been formally received and settled. The parties or witnesses on record are E-sursi(?) and A-maḫ; the matter was confirmed, with Ur-Ninmug also named. Several of the names and the final lines are worn and only partly legible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3(šar) 5(gešʾu) 5(geš) 5(u) less 2 (= 14,148), given; 2. field of the E-šula (estate); 3. returned to hand (i.e., received/accounted for); 4. E-sursi(?); 5. A-maḫ(?); 6. the matter was confirmed(?) (lit. "the word arose"); 7. Ur-Ninmug(?).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
3(szar2@c) 5(gesz'u@c) 5(gesz2@c) 5(u) la2 2(disz@t) szum2-ma GAN2 e2-szul-la szu-a gi4-a e2-sur-si? a-mah#? inim-ma i3#?-zi? ur-nin-mug?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Anonymous 270828. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P270828) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-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.