Position in chronology
HSS 10, 136
About this tablet
A small grain-receipt tablet from Gasur (the later Nuzi, in northern Iraq) during the Akkadian empire, around 2300 BCE. It records three disbursements of cereals — barley and emmer — received by two named individuals, Abuli and Tirku, with the barley drawn from the household stores of a man called Zuzu. It is a scrap of everyday imperial-age bookkeeping: the kind of running account by which estates tracked who took grain out of their storerooms.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a transfer record. Abuli received 2 barig of barley — barley belonging to Zuzu's household. Abuli also received 1 gur of barley from Lamašum. And Tirku received 3 gur of emmer wheat, at (or from) Nišbe. In total, a short ledger noting who took which cereals, in what amounts, and from whose stock.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. (This is a) nigiddûm(-account/transfer). 2. 2 barig of barley 3. Abuli 4. has received — 5. barley of the house of Zuzu. 6. 1 gur of barley 7. from(?) Lamašum 8. Abuli 9. received. 10. 3 gur of emmer 11. Tirku 12. received, 13. in/from 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
ni-gid2-de3-um 2(barig@c) _sze_ a-bu#-li im-hu-ra _sze e2_ zu-zu 1(asz@c) _sze gur_ in#? la-ma-szum a-bu-li im-hur 3(asz@c) _ziz2 gur_ tir-ku3 im-hur in nisz2-be
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 136. 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 (P213401) — 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.