Position in chronology
Anonymous 270829
About this tablet
An accounting tablet of the Old Akkadian period (about 2300–2200 BCE), probably from Umma in southern Iraq, recording disbursements of emmer wheat and bread-wheat. The entries name recipients and purposes — a trader, Amorites (western nomads, here appearing early in the written record), the son of a man named Sabul, flour production, and a boat at the quay — and close with a checked total. It is the everyday grain bookkeeping of the world's first territorial empire, the kingdom of Agade.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A grain-office ledger: 80 liters of emmer connected with Agade, apparently for a traveling merchant; another 100 liters of emmer plus 130 liters of wheat; 7 liters of emmer handed out; 13 liters of emmer for the Amorites; 6 liters for Sabul's son; and 80 liters of emmer earmarked for milling into emmer flour. The clerk then adds it up — 286 liters of emmer in all, written as 1 gur, 4 ban and 6 sila — and appends a final note of about 6 liters of wheat for a boat at the quay, whose last word is too damaged to read with certainty.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 barig 2 ban of emmer wheat — (of/for) Agade; 2. the trader(?) (ga-eš₈); 3. 1 barig 4 ban of emmer, 2 barig 1 ban of wheat; 4. 7 sila of emmer, allotted; 5. 1 ban 3 sila of emmer — the Amorite(s); 6. 6 sila — the son of Sabul; 7. 1 barig 2 ban of emmer for emmer-flour; 8. Total: 1 gur 4 ban 6 sila of emmer; 9. 6(?) sila of wheat — the boat (at) the quay, ...(TAG?-NE).
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(barig)# 2(ban2) ziz2 a-ga-de3 ga:esz8? 1(barig)# 4(ban2) ziz2 2(barig) 1(ban2) gig 7(disz)# sila3 ziz2 ba-a 1(ban2) 3(disz) sila3 ziz2 mar-tu 6(disz) sila3 dumu sa-bu-ul 1(barig) 2(ban2) ziz2 zi3 imgaga3-sze3 szunigin# 1(asz) 4(ban2) 6(disz) sila3 ziz2 gur 6(disz)#? sila3 gig ma2 kar TAG#?-NE
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Anonymous 270829. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P270829) — 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.