Position in chronology
ETB 2, 15
About this tablet
An inventory or issue list from Nagar (modern Tell Brak in northeastern Syria), one of the great cities of the Old Akkadian period. A scribe counts off valuable movable goods — axes, chairs, an ibex hide, and fine garments — some entries apparently tied to named individuals, including a man who may bear the military title 'captain'. Such lists are the everyday bookkeeping of a palace or estate storeroom, and tablets like this one are among the evidence that Akkadian imperial administration reached deep into northern Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A stock list: seven axes and eight chairs, then a damaged entry counting two of something, an ibex skin, and another item whose name is broken away. After that come single items linked to people — one item for Da-bulug, apparently an officer, one nurum-style garment, one fine niglam garment, and one item for a man called RU-zi-gur. The left edge of several lines is broken, so a few of the commodities and names are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 7 silig-axes, 2. 8 chairs, 3. [...] ... 2, 4. [...] ibex skin(s), 5. [...] ...-gan, 6. 1 (for) Da-bulug, the captain(?), 7. 1 nurum-garment, 8. 1 niglam-garment, 9. [1] (for) RU-zi-gur.
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
7(asz@c) silig 8(asz@c) gu-za [...]-x x x 2(asz@c) [...] kusz# dara3 [...] gan 1(asz@c) da#-bulug4 pa-pa 1(asz@c) tug2 nu-ru-um 1(asz@c) tug2 nig2-lam2 [1(asz@c)] RU#-zi-gur
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — ETB 2, 15. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: British Museum, London, UK (P212520) — 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.