Position in chronology
BIN 08, 233
About this tablet
A small record of disbursements from a grain store, written in the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, about 2300–2150 BCE. It lists how much barley groats and coarse flour went to three people: Dada received a large quantity, and Bara-anni and Napalu each received a single measure. The scribe was careful to name the measuring standard used: the oversized 'great gur' for the large issue and the 'standard' measure for the small ones. That detail shows how carefully officials of the Akkadian empire kept track of competing units of capacity. The last line names someone, probably the official responsible for the expenditure, but the end of the name cannot be read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued from stores: Dada gets 8 gur, 2 barig and 4 ban of barley groats plus 1 gur 2 barig of coarse flour, all measured by the large 'great gur'. Bara-anni gets 1 barig of groats and Napalu gets 1 barig of coarse flour, both measured by the standard barig. These amounts are booked as outgoing. The last line names Nin-dingir-zu…, probably the official responsible, but the end of the name is damaged.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse / continuous text (no line numbers or side markers are given in the source): 1. 8 gur 2 barig 4 ban of groats, (measured by the) great gur (gur sag-mah), 2. 1 gur 2 barig of dabin-flour, (measured by the) great gur (gur sag-mah): 3. Dada. 4. 1 barig of groats, (measured by the) standard (barig): 5. Bara-anni. 6. 1 barig of dabin-flour, (measured by the) standard (barig): 7. Napalu. 8. Expenditure; 9. Nin-dingir-zu-x.
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
8(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 4(ban2@c) nig2-ar3-ra gur sag-mah# 1(asz@c) 2(barig@c) dabin gur sag-mah# da-da 1(barig@c) nig2#-ar3#-ra si-sa2 bara2#-an-ni 1(barig@c) dabin si-sa2 na-pa2-lu5 zi-zi-ga#* nin-dingir-zu-x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BIN 08, 233. 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 (P212777) — 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.