Position in chronology
FTP 093
About this tablet
A barley account from Šuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, drawn up in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. A scribe lists quantities of grain against nine recipients or account-holders — mostly private individuals with Akkadian-sounding names, plus one professional, a male singer — and closes with a grand total. It is a snapshot of everyday grain administration: who got (or owed) how much, recorded so the institution could balance its books.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. It lists barley amounts person by person: 8 gur for Igi-dalani; 4 gur and 2 ban for the male singer; 1 gur 2 ban for Ea-bani; 1 gur 3 ban for the son of Bulalum; 5 gur for Ḫabatum; 2 gur for Gar-ili; 15 gur each for Ba'aba and Ḫalia; and 10 gur for Manua. The bottom line, partly damaged, records the total: 44 gur, 1 barig and 1 ban of barley — roughly eleven thousand liters of grain in all.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 8 gur of barley — 2. Igi-dalani; 3. 4 (gur) 2 ban₂ — the male singer; 4. 1 (gur) 2 ban₂ — Ea-bani; 5. 1 (gur) 3 ban₂ — the son of Bulalum; 6. 5 (gur) — Ḫabatum; 7. 2 (gur) — Gar-ili; 8. 15 (gur) — Ba'aba; 9. 15 (gur) — Ḫalia; 10. 10 (gur) — Manua. 11. Total: 40 [+4 gur 1 barig 1 ban₂ of barley].
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
8(asz) sze gur# IGI-da-la2-ni 4(asz) 2(ban2) nar nita 1(asz) 2(ban2) e2-a-ba-ni 1(asz) 3(ban2) dumu bu-la-lum 5(asz) ha-ba-tum 2(asz) gar3-i3-li2 1(u) 5(asz) ba-a-ba 1(u) 5(asz) ha-li-a 1(u) ma-nu-a szunigin 4(u)# [4(asz) 1(barig) 1(ban2) sze] gur#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — FTP 093. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P225784) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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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.