Position in chronology
BIN 08, 176
About this tablet
This is a short barley account from the Old Akkadian period (Sargonic Mesopotamia, around 2300–2200 BCE). Its findspot is unknown, and it is now in the Yale Babylonian Collection. It lists grain paid out to several named people, and one payment was used to buy a quantity of naga, an alkali plant used as soap and in cloth-working. A final line totals the grain. It shows the ordinary bookkeeping of an Akkadian-period household or institution, where barley did the work of money.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley payments. The first entry is damaged: [some] gur and 3 barig went to a person whose name starts x-Nin-, but the rest of the name is lost. Enlila got 3 gur 2 barig. A partly broken entry concerns assorted textiles. Hamati got 2 gur, Ur-su-sipa-lu 1 gur and Šeš-kala 1 ban. Another payment covered the price of 1 gur of alkali plant (soap-plant), and Ennu got 1 sila. The total is 10 gur 1 barig 2 ban 1 sila of barley. This is barley paid out, recorded under Ennu.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [n gur] 3 barig [...]: 2. x-Nin-[...]; 3. 3 gur 2 barig: Enlila; 4. x (for?) assorted textiles, du(?); 5. 2 gur: Hamati; 6. 1 gur: Ur-su-sipa-lu; 7. 1 ban: Šeš-kala; 8. Purchase price of 1 gur of alkali-plant (naga); 9. 1 sila: Ennu. 10. Total: 10 gur 1 barig 2 ban 1 sila of barley, 11. barley expended; (this is the account) of Ennu.
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[n] 3(barig@c) [...] x-nin-[...] 3(asz@c) 2(barig@c) en-lil2-la2 x tug2 hi-a du 2(asz@c) ha-ma-ti 1(asz@c) ur-su-sipa-lu 1(ban2@c) szesz-kal-la nig2#-sa10 1(asz@c) naga3 1(disz)# sila3 en-nu szunigin 1(u@c) 1(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) 1(disz) sila3 sze gur sze zi-ga en-nu-kam#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 176. 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 (P212720) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (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.