Position in chronology
BuB 2, 10
About this tablet
This is a delivery record from the Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period, about 2300–2150 BCE, probably from Girsu in southern Iraq. It lists what a person named Takumatum delivered: a silver object weighing a full mina (about half a kilogram), two fine garments, a grain-fed ox, eight grain-fed sheep, a goat, and a large amount of drink. A consignment this rich, with fine cloth and fattened animals, looks like an offering or a ceremonial gift, possibly for a festival or a high-ranking household. The tablet does not say who received it or why.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Takumatum delivered the following: a silver piece weighing one mina, one fine bar-dul robe and one fine nig-lam garment, a grain-fed ox, eight grain-fed sheep, and a goat. The delivery also included ten tibira-um (what these were is unclear), twenty jars of a pressed or strained product called gir, and forty jars of good-quality dida beer.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 silver dur₂-object; 2. its weight: 1 mina. 3. 1 bar-dul₅ garment of good quality; 4. 1 nig₂-lam₂ garment of good quality; 5. 1 grain-fed ox; 6. 8 grain-fed sheep; 7. 1 goat (maš₂); 8. 10 tibira-um; 9. 20 jars of pressed (sur-ra) gir₁₆; 10. 40 (jars of) good-quality dida beer: 11. Takumatum 12. delivered (it).
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(asz@c) dur2 ku3-babbar# ki-la2-bi 1(asz@c) ma-na 1(asz@c) tug2 bar-dul5 saga 1(asz@c) tug2 nig2-lam2 saga 1(asz@c) gu4# niga 8(asz@c) udu niga 1(asz@c) masz2 1(u@c) tibira-um# 2(u@c) dug sur-ra gir16# 4(u@c) kasz dida saga ta2-ku-ma-tum mu-kux(DU)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — BuB 2, 10. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation (P214934) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
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.