Position in chronology
CUSAS 26, 199
About this tablet
This is a receipt for barley from the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, around 2300–2150 BCE, from an unknown site in Mesopotamia. It records how much grain several men received: Errara, Irizisu (through an agent) and Lu-dingira. What makes it interesting is that the scribe used two measuring standards side by side, a 'large gur' and a 'standard gur', and converted between them. It shows how officials in Akkad's time handled rival systems of measurement.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Errara received 60 'large' gur of barley, which works out to 30 gur by the standard measure. Irizisu received 2 gur, 2 barig and 3 ban in large measure, handed over through Ba-zizi. Lu-dingira received 2 gur, 2 barig and 3 ban in standard measure. The totals come to 60 gur (as written), 2 barig and 3 ban in large measure, and 32 gur, 2 barig and 3 ban in standard measure. The account is signed off by E-šegid.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse/Reverse (no side markers in the source; lines numbered sequentially here) 1. 60 gur of barley, (by the) large gur, 2. (equal to) 30 gur (by the) standard gur: 3. Errara 4. received (it). 5. 2 gur 2 barig 3 ban, (by the) large gur, 6. Irizisu 7. — hand of Ba-zi[zi] — 8. rec[eived] (it). 9. 2 gur 2 barig 3 ban, (by the) [standard] gur: 10. Lu-dingira. 11. Total: 60 (gur) 2 barig 3 ban, (by the) large gur; 12. total: 32 gur 2 barig 3 ban, (by the) standard gur. 13. Hand of E-šegid.
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
1(gesz2@c) _sze gur mah_ 3(u@c) _gur si-sa2_ er3-ra-ra im-hur 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _gur mah_ i-ri-zi-su# szu ba-zi-[zi] im-[hur] 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _gur# [si-sa2]_ lu2-dingir-ra# szunigin 1(gesz2@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _gur# mah#_ szunigin 3(u@c) 2(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) gur si-sa2 szu e2-sze-gid2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — CUSAS 26, 199. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P391857) — 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.