Position in chronology
BIN 08, 228
About this tablet
This is a short record of barley from the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, around the 23rd century BCE. Its findspot in southern Mesopotamia is not known, and it is now in the Yale Babylonian Collection. It lists barley deliveries or payments year by year: one large amount for a first year, then three smaller amounts grouped under a second year. It ends by saying that someone, whose name is lost, handed the barley over to another person. The tablet shows how grain obligations, perhaps rent, loan repayments or rations, were tracked over more than one year.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
For the first year: 10 gur of barley. For the second year: 5 gur of barley, then 2 gur 2 barig, and another 2 gur 2 barig. The name of the person who handed it over is broken away, but the last line says he gave the barley to him.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse(?) 1. 10 gur of barley: 2. year 1. 3. 5 gur of barley, 4. 2 gur 2 barig of barley, 5. 2 gur 2 barig, year — 6. (this is) the 2nd year. 7. x-[...] 8. he/she ga[ve] (it) to him.
Our translation engine — Opus 5.5. 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@c) sze gur mu 1(disz@t) 5(asz@c) sze gur 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) sze gur 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) mu mu 2(disz@t)-kam x-[...] in-[na]-szum2#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 228. 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 (P212772) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.