Position in chronology
CUSAS 26, 244
About this tablet
This is a small grain account from Ur, written in the Sargonic period (about 2300–2150 BCE), when Ur belonged to the empire of the kings of Akkade. It lists amounts of barley and of beer-bread, the dried mash Mesopotamians used to brew beer. The barley is measured by the 'gur of Akkade', the official measure the Sargonic state imposed across its territory. The tablet is damaged, so we can't tell who received the grain or what it was for. Only one name survives, and only its ending (…-zizi).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Two gur of barley, measured by the official Akkade standard (about 600 liters). Next comes an entry for beer-bread, but the amount and details are lost. The following entries are 1 barig, 1 ban and 5 sila (about 75 liters) of something that is broken off; 1 barig and 1 ban of barley (about 70 liters) for someone whose name ends in '-zizi'; and 2 ban and 5 sila (about 25 liters) of an item that can no longer be read. The rest of each of these lines is damaged.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Beginning of the text as given) 1. 2 gur of barley, (by the gur) of Akkade; 2. beer-bread ... [...] ...; 3. 1 barig 1 ban 5 sila [...] from(?) [...]; 4. 1 barig 1 ban of barley, [...]-zizi(?); 5. 2 ban 5 sila ... [...] ... (End of the transliteration as given)
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
2(asz) sze gur a-ga-de3 bappir x [...] x 1(barig) 1(ban2) 5(disz) sila3# [...]-ta#? 1(barig) 1(ban2) sze# [...]-zi#?-zi#? 2(ban2) 5(disz) sila3 x [x] x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — CUSAS 26, 244. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P467744) — 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.