Position in chronology
CST 026
About this tablet
This is a small bookkeeping note from the Old Akkadian period (Sargonic, about 2300–2150 BCE). Its original findspot is unknown, and it is now in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. It records portions of ghee (clarified butter), a valuable dairy product, measured out in sila, about a litre each. The portions are listed under three named men, Ur-Enlila, Ur-emega and E-ki. The scribe then totals them in jars and sila. It is a small example of how the Akkadian state and temple economies kept track of luxury foodstuffs.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ur-Enlila is down for 6 litres of top-grade ghee and 3 litres of ordinary ghee, plus a further entry of 6 whose commodity is broken away. Ur-emega gets 6 litres of ghee, and E-ki gets 12. The total comes to one jar plus 17 litres of ghee, described as oil that was poured out, or poured off. The last line is damaged; only the end of one word, possibly a name or a note, survives.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse / reverse sequence as given; no side markers in the source) 1. 6 sila of first-quality [ghee], 2. 3 sila of [gh]ee, 3. 6(?) [......]: Ur-Enlila. 4. 6 sila of ghee: 5. Ur-emega. 6. 12 sila of ghee: 7. E-ki. 8. Total: 1 jar (and) 17 sila of ghee, 9. [o]il poured out(?). 10. ...... [......]-si(?)
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
6(disz@t) sag [i3 (nun)] sila3# 3(disz@t) [i3]-nun# sila3 6(disz@t)#? [(x)] ur#-en-lil2-la2 6(disz@t) i3-nun sila3 ur-eme2-ga 1(u) 2(disz@t)# i3-nun sila3 e2-ki szunigin 1(disz) dug 1(u) 7(disz@t) sila3#! i3-nun i3# de2-a x [x (x)]-si#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — CST 026. 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 (P212950) — 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.