Position in chronology
CUSAS 27, 176
About this tablet
A bookkeeper's running account of barley from the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) period, around 2300–2200 BCE, when the kings of Agade ruled Mesopotamia. Month by month it logs barley issued as rations and as raw material for groats, measured by the official capacity standard of Agade, the imperial capital. The closing lines are the interesting part: they record an outstanding deficit and note bluntly that 'its account has not been settled' — an ancient auditor flagging unfinished business. The mix of Sumerian bookkeeping terms with the Akkadian word ana ('for') captures the bilingual administration of the world's first empire.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley ledger: 14 gur and 1 barig of barley for rations (Agade standard) in the brick-making month; 12 gur of barley for rations in the sowing month; 6 gur of barley for making groats; and a further, partly illegible barley entry in the second (leap) sowing month. Running total: 33 gur of barley by the Agade measure. After a damaged stretch, the record closes with the audit note: there is a shortfall, apparently charged to a man named Ba-KA-aš, and the account has not yet been balanced.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 14 (gur) 1 barig — barley ra[tions, in gur] of Agade, 2. month: "Setting the brick in the brick-mold" (Sig-šubba-gar); 3. 12 gur — barley rations, 4. month: "Sowing" (Šu-numun); 5. 6 gur of barley 6. for groats; 7. [x] barley(?) ... , 8. month: "Sowing," the second time (i.e., the intercalary second Šu-numun). 9. Total: 33 gur of barley in the (measure of) Agade. 10. [......] 11. [......] 12. It is the deficit; 13. Ba-KA-aš (is accountable for it?); 14. its account has not been settled.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(u@c) 4(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze-[ba gur] a-ga-de3 itix(|UD@sxBAD|) sig4-szub-ba-gar 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) sze-ba gur itix(|UD@sxBAD|) szu-numun 6(asz@c) sze gur _a-na_ nig2-ar3-ra [x] sze#? x (x) na# iti szu-numun# [a]-ra2 2(disz)-kam szunigin 3(u@c) 3(asz@c) sze gur a-ga-de3 [...] [...] la2#-ia3-[am3] ba-KA-a-asz2 nig2-ka9-bi nu#-ak#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — CUSAS 27, 176. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P253326) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.