Position in chronology
HSS 10, 082
About this tablet
An everyday grain-account from Gasur (later Nuzi, in northern Iraq) during the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE — part of the earliest known archive from this site. It records two measured lots of barley booked against two named men, notes who received the grain and which official held it in charge, and dates the transaction by the local month name. Tablets like this show a Semitic-speaking administrative community running a precise barley economy centuries before the town became famous as Hurrian Nuzi.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Receipt for two lots of barley, measured by the standard gur: 3 gur, 3 barig, 3 ban and 4 sila charged to Tiriku, and 2 gur, 1 ban and 7 sila charged to Aḫu-ṭāb. Ana-šumša took delivery of the grain. The barley was under the responsibility of an official whose name is partly broken — Nani-something. Dated to the month of Ḫanit.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 3 gur, 3 barig, 3 ban, 4 [sila] of barley, in the standard gur — 2. Tiriku; 3. 2 gur, 1 ban, 7 sila of barley, in the standard gur — 4. Aḫu-ṭāb (a-hu-du10): 5. Ana-šumša(?) 6. received (it). 7. Barley in the charge (lit. 'hand') of Nani-... 8. Month: Ḫani[t].
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
3(asz@c) 3(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) 4(disz@t) [_sila3] sze gur si-[sa2_] ti-ri2-ku5 2(asz@c) 1(ban2@c) 7(disz@t) _sila3 sze gur si-sa2_ a-hu-du10 a#-na-szum-sza3 im#-hu-ra _sze_ szu na-ni-x _iti_ ha-ni-[it]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 082. 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 (P213348) — 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.