Position in chronology
Anonymous 270830
About this tablet
A small round ('lentil-shaped') administrative tablet from the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, probably from Umma in southern Iraq. It records a single disbursement: two barig (roughly 120 liters) of coarse barley flour issued to a man from the city of Šuruppak, with a cupbearer named Šeš-bad3 acting as the responsible commissioner and an overseer, Di-Utu, also named. Dated only by month — the barley-harvest month — it is a snapshot of the everyday flour accounting that kept a Mesopotamian provincial administration running around 2300 BCE.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt: 120 liters (2 barig) of dabin flour issued to a man from Šuruppak. The transaction was supervised by Šeš-bad3, the cupbearer, acting as commissioner. Booked under the e2-dumu establishment; Di-Utu was the overseer in charge. Date: the month of the barley harvest. The back of the tablet was left blank — this one entry was the whole record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. 2 barig of dabin-flour, 2. (to) the man of Šuruppak 3. it was given (an-na-šum2). 4. Šeš-bad3, 5. the cupbearer, 6. was its commissioner (maškim). 7. (At/for) the e2-dumu (the 'children's house'); 8. Di-Utu 9. (was) the overseer (nu-banda3). 10. Month: "Barley harvest" (iti še-gur10).
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
2(barig@c) dabin lu2# szuruppak an-na-szum2 szesz-bad3 sagi maszkim-bi e2-dumu di-utu nu-banda3 iti sze-gurx(|SZE&SZE.KIN|)-a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Anonymous 270830. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P270830) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-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.