Position in chronology
Anonymous 271235
About this tablet
An account of pig fodder from the Old Akkadian period, probably from Umma in southern Iraq, around 2300 BCE. A palace official records the barley, condiment plants and bread issued to fatten 'reed pigs' — swine raised in the canebrakes — with the food routed from the king's palace to the 'women's house,' the queen's household establishment. It is a small window onto royal animal husbandry: even pig feed was weighed, dated and filed. The date by the Akiti festival month ties it to one of Mesopotamia's oldest religious calendars.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Feed record: 2 gur and 2 barig of top-quality barley, plus mustard seed, went to fatten the reed-thicket pigs; another 2 barig and 2 ban of ḫar-bread (the next signs are damaged) was likewise fed to the same pigs. The palace delivered the goods — this is the king's property — and it was handed over to the women's household, at the small house (the pen). Filed in the month of the Akiti festival.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2 gur 2 barig of fine (sig₁₅-quality) barley, 2. (and) mustard-seed(?): the reed(-thicket) pigs were filled (fed) with it; 3. 2 barig 2 ban of ḫar-bread(?) ... ..., 4. likewise(?) the reed(-thicket) pigs were filled (fed) with it. 5. The palace 6. brought (it); 7. it is the king's. 8. To the women's house 9. it was given. 10. (At/by) the E-tur (the 'small house' / pen). 11. Month: Akiti.
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(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze sig15 gur gazi#? szah2 gi ab-si 2(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) ninda har#? x x kam? szah2 gi ab-si e2-gal an-tum2 lugal-am6 e2-munus-sze3 an-na-szum2 e2-tur iti a2#-ki-ti
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Anonymous 271235. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P271235) — 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.