Position in chronology
BIN 08, 035
About this tablet
A short Old Akkadian (Sargonic) account of silver, listing small sums paid out or booked against a handful of named people and functions: the chief herdsman, a boat (or its crew), a scribe, and two men called A-kalam-e and A-ba-Enlil. The amounts are tiny by royal standards — shekels, quarter-shekels, thirds and individual grains of weight — the scale of wages, hire and petty settlements rather than state treasure. One entry is qualified as being 'of Agade', the capital's weight standard, a small reminder that this bookkeeping belongs to the world of Sargon's empire. The first two lines are damaged, so the opening entries and at least one recipient's name are lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A running tally of silver payments. The first two entries — one and a half units, then one shekel for someone whose name is broken off — are damaged. The next shekel is reckoned by the Agade standard. Then: half a shekel, charged to the chief herdsman; a small amount (one measure, a third, and two grains) for the boat; a quarter shekel for the scribe; half a shekel for A-kalam-e; and two shekels for A-ba-Enlil.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 (plus) a half — silver, [......] 2. 1 — silver, (in) shekels, ... [......] 3. 1 — silver, (in) shekels, (of) Agade 4. a half — silver, (in) shekels: (this is) of the chief herdsman 5. silver: 1 |NINDA2׊E|(-unit), 1/3, 2 grains — 6. (this is) of the boat 7. silver: 1/4 (shekel): (this is) of the scribe 8. a half — silver, (in) shekels: A-kalam-e 9. 2 — silver, (in) shekels: 10. A-ba-Enlil
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(asz@c) bar ku3 [...] 1(asz@c) ku3 gin2 x [...] 1(asz@c) ku3 gin2 a-ga-de3# bar ku3 gin2 szusz3-kam ku3 |NINDA2xSZE| 1/3(disz@c) sze 2(disz) ma2!-kam ku3 igi-4(disz)-gal2 dub-sar-kam bar ku3 gin3 a-kalam-e 2(asz@c) ku3 gin2 a-ba-en-lil2#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 035. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (P212612) — 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.