Position in chronology
HSS 10, 140
About this tablet
A grain account from Gasur (later Nuzi, in northern Iraq) during the Old Akkadian period, roughly 2300 BCE. It lists very large quantities of barley and emmer wheat — hundreds of gur, each gur about 300 liters on the Akkad standard — booked against named individuals such as Šu-Eštar. The explicit note that the barley is measured 'in the gur of Agade' shows the Sargonic state's standardized capital-city measure being used far out in the provinces: everyday evidence of how the world's first empire imposed uniform bookkeeping on its territories.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
An accounting ledger of grain. Šu-Eštar is credited with 368 gur of barley, measured by the official Agade standard, plus 65 gur of emmer wheat. Kari accounts for 134 gur, 2 barig and 3 ban of barley. Sirni accounts for 56 gur and 3 ban of barley, though part of that figure is damaged. The final entries record roughly 62 more gur of barley and about 10 gur of emmer, but the ends of those lines are broken away. In modern terms, each gur is around 300 liters, so this tablet tracks well over a hundred tons of grain.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 368 gur of barley — (measured in) the gur of Agade — 2. 65 gur of emmer: 3. Šu-Eštar. 4. 134 gur 2 barig 3 ban of barley: 5. Kari. 6. 56 gur 3 ban [+ n gur of barley]: 7. Sir[ni]. 8. 62(?) [+ n gur of barley], 9. 10(?) [+ n gur of emmer].
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
6(gesz2@c) 8(asz@c)#? sze gur# gur a-ga-de3#[] 1(gesz2@c) 5(asz@c) ziz2 gur szu-esz18-dar# 2(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) sze gur# ka3-ri2# 5(u) 6(asz) 3(ban2) [n sze gur] si-ir-[ni] 1(gesz2@c) 2(asz@c)#? [n sze gur] 1(u@c)#? [n ziz2 gur]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 140. 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 (P213405) — 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.