Position in chronology
Anonymous 270837
About this tablet
A small administrative account from the Akkadian (Sargonic) period, around 2300 BCE, probably from Umma in southern Iraq. A scribe recorded modest allotments of coarse barley flour — a few ban-measures each — issued to half a dozen named individuals, and dated the account to the harvest month. It is the everyday bookkeeping of a Mesopotamian estate or institution: rations of flour handed out and the recipients written down so the office could balance its stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a flour-distribution list. Kid-Enlil-gar receives 3 ban of coarse barley flour, Ma'u 4 ban, Ur-šerda 3 ban, a man whose name begins Ur- gets a full barig, Nuna 3 ban, and another (name damaged) 2 ban. One line is too worn to read. The account covers a span noted as seven months, and is dated to the month of the barley harvest. A final entry adds 5 ban for Sipa-nam; the last traces are illegible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (col. i) 1. 3 ban of dabin-flour: Kid-Enlil-gar(?), 2. 4 ban: Ma'u, 3. 3 ban: Ur-šerda, 4. 1 barig: Ur-..., 5. 3 ban: Nuna, 6. 2 ban: ... ..., 7. (line illegible: ... ... ... ...) (col. ii) 8. 7 months (or: the 7th month); 9. it is the month of "barley harvest" (še-gur). 10. 5 ban: Sipa-nam, 11. (traces: ... ...)
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(ban2@c) dabin kid-en-lil2?-gar 4(ban2@c) ma-u2 3(ban2@c) ur-szer7-da# 1(barig@c) ur-x 3(ban2@c) nu-na 2(ban2@c)# x x x x x x iti 7(disz@t) iti sze-gurx(|SZE&SZE.KIN|)-am3 5(ban2@c) sipa-nam x x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Anonymous 270837. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P270837) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.