Position in chronology
BIN 08, 221
About this tablet
This is a short barley account from the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, about 2300–2150 BCE, from an unknown site in southern Mesopotamia. It lists four entries of barley against named people and adds them up to 45 gur, roughly 13,500 litres in the Sargonic system. The closing phrase, literally 'barley that is in the street', was a bookkeeping expression for grain that was out of the storehouse and still owed, such as loans or advances not yet repaid. It gives a small view of how estate managers kept track of their outstanding grain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Outstanding barley: Ur-zigumma owes 15 gur, Ur-Nerah owes 10, Amar-e and Enmetena together owe 10, and Enlila, son of Lugal-niggani, owes 10. That makes 45 gur of barley in all. None of it is back in the granary yet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse/Reverse (as given, no side markers in source) 1. 15 gur of barley: 2. Ur-zigumma; 3. 10 (gur): Ur-Nerah; 4. 10 (gur): Amar-e 5. and Enmetena; 6. 10 (gur): Enlila, 7. son of Lugal-nigga(?)ni. 8. Total: 45 gur of barley, 9. barley that is 'in the street' (i.e., outstanding).
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
1(u) 5(asz@c) sze gur ur-zigum-ma 1(u@c) ur-nerah 1(u@c) amar-e2 u3 en-te-me-na 1(u@c) en-lil2-la2 dumu lugal-nig2-ga2?-ni szunigin 4(u) 5(asz@c) sze gur sze sila-a gal2-la
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 221. 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 (P212765) — 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.