Position in chronology
CST 023
About this tablet
This is a farm account from the Akkadian period, around 2300–2150 BCE. It comes from somewhere in Mesopotamia, but the exact findspot is unknown. It lists the seed barley issued to named men, probably farmers or plow-team leaders, and ends with a note that the arrears of the plowmen are still to be paid in. Records like this show how large estates kept track of seed grain and the harvest they expected back, sometimes over a year or more.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Seed-barley ledger: [...] gur (the amount is broken) to Dada, son of Ur-e; 24 gur to Ur-Šara; 6 gur 2 barig to Adda-tur. Next comes a figure of 220 gur of seed barley, then about 144 gur of threshed barley (less 2 ban), with a partly lost name, ...-si. The last lines say that what the head plowmen still owe must be delivered. The final line gives a period of one year and a number of months, but the months are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse(?) 1. [...] gur of barley [at disposal(?)], ... seed: 2. [Da]da, son of Ur-e. 3. 24 gur of barley, seed: 4. Ur-Šara. 5. 6 gur 2 barig of barley, seed: 6. Adda-tur. 7. 220 gur of barley, seed. 8. 144 gur 2 barig less 2 ban, 1(?) of barley, threshed. 9. x-x-si. 10. The arrears of the chief plowmen(?) [... plow]men(?) 11. [are] to be brought out. 12. 1(?) year [n months].
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
[...] gur# [sag-gal2] x numun [da]-da dumu ur-e2 2(u) 4(asz) sze gur numun ur#-szara2 6(asz) 2(barig) sze gur numun ad#-da-tur 3(gesz2) 4(u) sze gur numun 2(gesz2) 2(u) 4(asz) 2(barig) la2 2(ban2) 1(disz) sze gur gesz ra-a x-x-si la2-ia3 sag-apin-[... engar?]-ra-ke4-ne e3-e3-[dam] 1(disz)#? mu [n iti]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — CST 023. 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 (P212947) — 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.