Position in chronology
BIN 08, 072
About this tablet
A short Sargonic-period account from southern Iraq, probably from Zabalam, listing measured amounts of oil issued to named individuals. The first recipient is the 'chief smith' — a workshop foreman — followed by a man called En-kur-ša3-še and another called Di-Utu, with two further entries marked as destined 'to' someone or somewhere before the tablet breaks off. Amounts are given in the characteristic Mesopotamian 'minus' style: six minas less three shekels, four minas less six shekels, and so on. It is ordinary institutional bookkeeping of the Akkadian empire, the kind of oil-disbursement record a household or temple steward kept by the hundred.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Oil issued, by weight: six minas less three shekels to the head blacksmith; four minas less one shekel to a man whose name is now broken; four minas less six shekels to En-kur-ša3-še; two and a half minas less four shekels to Di-Utu. Two more entries follow, each marked as going to a recipient whose name survives only in part — one beginning 'Ib-', one beginning with damaged signs. The tablet breaks off after that, so the total and the date, if they were written, are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 6 minas of oil minus 3 shekels — 2. the chief smith (gal-simug); 3. 4 minas minus 1 [shekel] — 4. [......] 5. ...-su-... ; 6. 4 minas minus 6 shekels — 7. En-kur-ša3-še; 8. 2 1/2 minas minus 4 shekels — 9. Di-Utu; 10. for/to Ib-; 11. for/to ...-UD-GIR2-; 12. [......] (rest destroyed)
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
6(asz@c) i3 ma-na la2 3(asz@c) gin2 gal-simug 4(asz@c) ma-na la2 1(asz@c)# [...] x-su-x 4(asz@c) ma-na la2 6(asz@c) gin2 en-kur-sza3-sze3 2(asz@c) 1/2(asz@c) ma-na la2 4(asz@c) gin2 di-utu ib-sze3 x-UD-GIR2@g-sze3 [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 072. 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 (P212628) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.