Position in chronology
CST 016
About this tablet
This is a short food-supply account from the Akkad (Sargonic) period, around 2300–2150 BCE, from an unknown site in Mesopotamia. It is now in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. It works out how much grain is needed to brew beer and make fine flour: first the amount for one day, then the barley and emmer (an ancient wheat) needed for a whole month, and finally a total. It shows how state or temple administrators planned rations ahead, using the standard measures of the Akkadian empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One jar of beer takes one barig of barley, and five sila of fine flour are also needed. That is the requirement for a single day. For a whole month, brewing needs 3 gur 3 barig of barley, measured by the standard 'sag-gal' gur, plus 1 gur 1 barig of emmer. The grand total comes to twenty-some gur by the same measure, but the exact figure is lost. A second total and the next lines are too damaged to read, except for a note that something 'will be added'. The rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(?) (jar of) beer: 1 barig of barley per jar; 5 sila of fine flour: this is (the allotment) for 1 day. Barley for beer: 3 gur 3 barig, (by the) standard gur sag-gal; emmer for beer: 1 gur 1 barig: this is (the allotment) for 1 month. Total: n+20 [... gur], (by the gur) sag-[gal] ...; total: [......] ... it is(?). [......] ...(?) [......]-a(?) will be added. [......] (rest destroyed)
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(disz)? kasz 1(barig@c) sze dug 5(disz@t) sila3 zi3-sig15@v 1(disz@t) u4-a-kam sze kasz 3(asz@c) 3(barig@c) gur sag-gal2 si-sa2 ziz2 kasz 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) gur 1(disz@t) iti(|UD@sxTIL|)-a-kam szunigin n 2(u@c) [... gur] sag#-[gal2] x szunigin# [...] x kam? [...] musz#? [im-si-sa2]-a#? ba#-dah-e [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — CST 016. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK (P212940) — 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.