Position in chronology
AuOr 09, 152 8
About this tablet
A short barley-ration list from Ešnunna (modern Tell Asmar) in the Diyala region, written under the Akkadian empire, roughly the twenty-third century BCE. It records small measured allotments of grain — mostly one to three ban, about ten to thirty litres each — issued to a named handful of people, including the local governor, who receives by far the largest share. The closing line gave the grand total in gur, the big capacity unit, but the number itself is lost. It is ordinary institutional bookkeeping: the kind of tablet that shows an administration feeding its staff, one household at a time.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley issued: about 10 litres (plus an amount now lost) to Bēlī-ṭāb; 60 litres to the governor; 20 litres each to Bubu and Zuzu; 30 litres to Kuku; 10 litres each to Pusu-du, Imtalik, Ur-e, and again to Pusu-du; an unreadable amount to Daruru; 10 litres to Ikrub-il; 20 litres to a name now broken away. One further line is too damaged to read. The tablet closes with a grand total in gur of barley by the standard measure, but the figure itself is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [n] (and) 1 ban — Bēlī-du₁₀ (Bēlī-ṭāb) 2. 1 barig — the governor (ensi) 3. 2 ban — Bubu 4. 2 ban — Zuzu 5. 3 ban — Kuku 6. 1 ban — Pusu-du₁₀ 7. 1 ban — Imtalik 8. 1 ban — Ur-e 9. 1 ban — Pusu-du₁₀ 10. [n] — Daruru 11. 1 ban — Ikrub-[il] 12. 2 ban — [......] 13. [......]-x-[......] 14. [Total: n] gur of barley, (by the) sag-gal (standard) measure.
Our translation engine — Opus 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
[n] 1(ban2@c)# be-li2-du10 1(barig@c) ensi2 2(ban2@c) bu3-bu3 2(ban2@c)# zu-zu 3(ban2@c)# ku-ku 1(ban2@c)# pu3-su-du10 1(ban2@c)# im6#-ta2-lik 1(ban2@c) ur-e2 1(ban2@c)# pu3-su-du10 [n] da#-ru-ru 1(ban2@c) ik-ru-ub#-[dingir] 2(ban2@c) x-[...] [...]-x-[...] [szunigin n] sze gur sag#-gal2#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — AuOr 09, 152 8. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Montserrat Museum, Barcelona, Spain (P212577) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.