Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 109
About this tablet
A Sargonic-period administrative receipt from the city of Adab in southern Iraq, roughly 2300 BCE. It records a large disbursement of barley — about 113 gur, well over 25,000 liters — handed over by an official named Ur-kum to a boatman, Ur-lu, presumably for river transport. The final lines book the transaction as a formal expenditure under the supervising officer Di-Utu, a snapshot of how grain moved by boat through the Akkadian state's logistics network.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Record of a barley payout: 113 gur and 3 ban of barley (a very large shipment, tens of thousands of liters). Ur-kum handed it over to Ur-lu, the boatman. One short line is too damaged to read, but the text confirms the grain was duly measured out. The account closes with the bookkeeping formula: this is barley expended from Ur-kum's account, with Di-Utu serving as the overseer in charge.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2(geš₂) less 7 (= 113) gur 3 ban of barley, 2. Ur-kum 3. to Ur-lu, 4. the boatman, 5. gave (it). 6. ...-za-... (broken) 7. it was measured out. 8. Barley expended (zi-ga) 9. (of) Ur-kum. 10. Di-Utu 11. (was) the overseer.
Our translation engine — Fable 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(gesz2@c) la2 7(asz@c) 3(ban2@c) sze gur ur#-kum-ke4 ur#-lu2# ma2-lah5 in#-na#-szum2 x-za-x al-ag2# sze zi-ga ur-kum di-utu nu-banda3
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — CUSAS 35, 109. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P250914) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.