Position in chronology
BIN 08, 232
About this tablet
This is a short grain-distribution record from the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, about 2300–2150 BCE. Its findspot is unknown, and it is now in the Yale Babylonian Collection. The surviving entries list large amounts of dry goods, measured in the Akkadian-period gur, for three recipients. The first is a man named Ur-mu. The second is the regular offerings belonging to the nin-dingir, a high priestess serving the goddess Ninšubur. The third is Ur-su, the shepherd who looked after the fattened sheep. The tablet shows how one institution fed its religious staff and its livestock keepers from the same stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The first line is damaged: an amount of something is lost there, and it was probably issued to Ur-mu. Next, 4 gur, 4 barig and 5 sila (roughly 1,445 sila) are set aside as regular offerings for the high priestess of the goddess Ninšubur. Finally, Ur-su, the shepherd in charge of the fattened sheep, gets 5 gur minus 3 ban, about 1,470 sila, perhaps as feed for his animals. The text does not name the commodity, though it is most likely barley.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (the source gives no side labels; lines numbered here in order) 1. [n] x [......] 2. Ur-mu. 3. 4 gur 4 barig 5 sila: regular offerings, 4. (for) the nin-dingir priestess of Ninšubur. 5. 5 gur less 3 ban: Ur-su, shepherd of the grain-fed sheep. (The transliteration ends here)
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] x [...] ur-mu# 4(asz@c) 4(barig@c) 5(disz) sila3 sa2-du11# nin-dingir nin-szubur 5(asz@c) la2 3(ban2@c) ur-su sipa udu niga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 232. 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 (P212776) — 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.