Position in chronology
CUSAS 26, 248
About this tablet
A short receipt from Ur in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300–2200 BCE. It records the ingredients for brewing beer: beer-bread and malted or ground grain, in fine and ordinary grades. These were issued in named amounts to three people, a man named Gišgal-esi, a household administrator called Mīrānum and a 'wine-man' named Ēṭib-mēr. The chief administrator of the temple of the healing god Ninazu signed for the whole lot, so the tablet shows how temple estates handled the supplies behind one of Mesopotamia's staple drinks.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a record of beer-making supplies. Gišgal-esi gets top-grade beer-bread, counted by the large gur measure (the amount is not given), plus 5 gur of top-grade groats. Mīrānum, the household manager, gets 2 barig of top-grade beer-bread and 2 barig of top-grade groats. Ēṭib-mēr, the wine-man, gets 2 barig each of ordinary-grade beer-bread and groats. The chief administrator of Ninazu's temple, whose name is only partly legible, signed for the goods. They are booked as withdrawn from stock.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] gur of fine-quality beer-bread, (measured by) the large gur; 5 gur of fine-quality groats: (for) Gišgal-esi. 2 barig of fine-quality beer-bread, 2 barig of fine-quality groats: (for) Mīrānum, the household administrator. 2 barig of ordinary-quality beer-bread, 2 barig of ordinary-quality groats: (for) Ēṭib-mēr, the wine-man. ISZ-ISZ-gi4-x, the temple administrator of Ninazu, received (it). Expended.
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
n bappir sig15 gur sag-gal2 5(asz@c) nig2-ar3-ra sig15 gur giszgal-e-si 2(barig@c) bappir sig15 2(barig@c) nig2-ar3-ra sig15 mi-ra-num2 szabra 2(barig@c) bappir us2 2(barig@c) nig2-ar3-ra us2 e3-t,ib-me-er lu2-gesztin-na ISZ-ISZ-gi4-x sanga nin-a-zu-ke4 szu# ba-ti ba-zi
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — CUSAS 26, 248. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P467770) — 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.