Position in chronology
BIN 08, 053
About this tablet
A small silver account from the Akkadian period (later third millennium BCE), of unknown find-spot, now in the Nies Babylonian Collection at Yale. It lists sums of silver set beside named men, together with goods — two and a half gur of barley and a single chair — whose value the scribe converts into silver at 7½ shekels and 1 shekel respectively. The closing line records that the total was handed over or carried off. It is a plain but telling document: everyday Mesopotamian bookkeeping already priced grain and furniture in weighed silver, centuries before coinage existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ten shekels of silver for Ama-barage. Two and a half gur of barley, valued at seven and a half shekels of silver. Three shekels of silver for AN-E₂. One chair, valued at one shekel of silver. Four shekels of silver for Lugal-ad-pa-e. The lot was taken away. The tablet gives no grand total and no date — it is a working memorandum, listing each item, each man, and what each was worth in weighed silver.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 10 shekels of silver — 2. Ama-barage; 3. 2½ gur of barley, 4. its silver (equivalent): 7½ shekels; 5. 3 shekels of silver — 6. AN-E₂ (Il-bītim?); 7. 1 chair, 8. its silver (equivalent): 1 shekel; 9. 4 shekels of silver — 10. Lugal-ad-pa-e; 11. (it) was taken away / delivered.
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
1(u) ku3 gin2 ama-bara2-ge 2(disz@t) 1/2(disz) sze gur 7(disz) 1/2(disz) ku3 gin2-bi 3(disz@t) ku3 gin2 AN-E2! 1(disz@t) aszte2 1(disz@t) ku3 gin2-bi 4(disz@t) ku3 gin2 lugal-ad!-pa-e3 ba-de6
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 053. 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 (P212622) — 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.