Position in chronology
Anonymous 271221
About this tablet
A small administrative account from the Old Akkadian period, probably from Umma in southern Iraq, recording barley issued as fodder for female donkeys. Each entry gives the amount of grain, the animal, the person responsible for it, and the number of days the ration covered. Donkeys were the trucks of the Bronze Age — plow teams and pack animals — and their feed had to be booked as carefully as workers' rations. The closing lines date the account by month and year.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Feed ledger for the donkeys. Adda's jenny got 2 ban (about 12 liters) of barley to eat, covering 15 days. A full-grown jenny received a further amount of barley — the figure is broken away — for 18 days. NE-NE's jenny got 1 ban less 1 sila (about 5 liters) for 20 days. Filed in the month UD×PAP — four such (months) counted — in the nineteenth year.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 1. 2 ban of barley, fodder, 2. (for) a jenny donkey, 3. (of) Adda; 4. 15 days. 5. [... of barley, fodder,] 6. (for) a full-grown jenny donkey; 7. 20 less 2 (= 18) days. 8. 1 ban less 1 sila of barley, fodder, 9. (for) a jenny donkey, 10. (of) NE-NE; 11. 20 days. Reverse: 12. Month: itix (UD×PAP); there are 4 (of them). 13. 20 less 1 (= 19) years (year 19?).
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
2(ban2@c) sze# gu7# eme6 ad-da 1(u) 5(disz@t) u4 [... sze gu7] eme6-gal 2(u) la2 2(disz@t) u4 1(ban2@c) la2 1(disz@t) sila3 sze gu7 eme6 NE-NE 2(u) u4 itix(|UDxPAP|) i-gal2 4(disz) 2(u) la2 1(disz@t) mu
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Anonymous 271221. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P271221) — 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.