Position in chronology
HSS 10, 049
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from Gasur (later Nuzi, in northern Iraq) from the Old Akkadian period, roughly 2300 BCE. It lists quantities of barley owed by three named men — one of them a town elder — and sums them up as an outstanding deficit, apparently reckoned at a threshing-floor or a place called Maškan-gal. It is a small window into how a provincial administration under the Akkadian empire tracked grain debts against individuals by name.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Nine gur of barley are charged to Šu-ilīsu, the town elder. Another entry — the figure partly broken, perhaps three gur, two barig and three ban — is charged to Puzur-Eštar. A third amount of barley, its number lost, is charged to a man whose name reads something like Išma-ilum-turdar, at Maškan-gal, the great threshing floor. Altogether the account comes to 26 gur, 2 barig and 3 ban of barley, and the closing line labels the whole sum as arrears — barley still owed, not yet delivered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 10 less 1 (= 9) gur of barley — 2. Šu-ilīsu, 3. elder of the city; 4. [...] 3(?) gur 2 barig 3 ban of barley — 5. Puzur-Eštar; 6. [...] gur of barley — 7. Išma-ilum-TUR-DAR (?), 8. at Maškan-gal ("the great threshing floor"). 9. Total: 26 gur 2 barig 3 ban of barley, 10. (this is) of the deficit (arrears).
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) la2 1(asz@c) _sze gur_ szu-i3-li2-su _abba2 iri_ [...] 3(asz@c)#? 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _sze gur_ puzur4#-esz18-dar [...] _sze gur_ isz#-ma2-dingir-tur-dar in# masz-kan2-gal szunigin 2(u@c) 6(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _sze gur_ szu _la2-ia3_
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 049. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (P213315) — 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.