Position in chronology
HSS 10, 088
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from Gasur (later Nuzi, in northern Iraq) from the Old Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2200 BCE. It records three sizeable allotments of threshed barley to three named men — Ḫamadarum, Rabī-ilum, and Uḫluk — under the authority of an official named Zuzu, whose title marks him as a land-registrar or surveyor, with the transaction located at a place called Nišbe. Tablets like this belong to the earliest known archive from the site and show Akkadian imperial-style bookkeeping operating far from the empire's southern heartland.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. Ḫamadarum is booked for 23 gur, 2 barig, and 3 ban of barley (well over 5,000 liters); Rabī-ilum for 12 gur; and Uḫluk for 26 gur. The note specifies that this is threshed barley — grain already beaten off the stalk and ready for storage or distribution. The account was handled by Zuzu, the land-registrar, and the transaction took place at Nišbe. Three entries, one responsible official, one location: the everyday paperwork of a provincial grain administration.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 23 gur, 2 barig, 3 ban of barley, 2. (for) Ḫamadarum; 3. 12 gur of barley, 4. (for) Rabī-ilum; 5. 26 gur of barley, 6. (for) Uḫluk. 7. Threshed barley (barley beaten from the stalk). 8. Zuzu, the land-registrar. 9. In Nišbe.
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
2(u@c) 3(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) _sze gur_ ha-ma-da-ru-um 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) _sze gur_ ra-bi2-dingir 2(u@c) 6(asz@c) _sze gur_ uh-lu-uk _sze gesz ra_ zu-zu _sa12-du5_ in nisz2-be
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 088. 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 (P213354) — 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.