Position in chronology
HSS 10, 142
About this tablet
A payroll-style ration list from Gasur — the town in northern Iraq that would later become famous as Nuzi — written in the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. A scribe records grain allotments measured in barig (one barig is roughly 60 liters) issued to named individuals: a scribe, a city elder, and a dozen other men, some bearing Akkadian names and at least one (Ḫiwiriš) a Hurrian name — early evidence of the mixed population of the town. It is the everyday bookkeeping of an ancient provincial administration: who got paid, and how much.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A distribution list: two barig of grain each (about 120 liters) go to Išmā-ilum, to Ilī the scribe, and to Šu-ilīsu the city elder. The next entries are damaged — Zukiki and a man named Adda-something received unknown amounts. Then the smaller shares, one barig each (about 60 liters): Ḫiwiriš, another man whose name is lost, and — after a badly broken stretch that mentions a woman (or 'the king' and a woman) and the names Ilū-ilum and Babanien — Ēšum, Iddi-šum, Abulum, and Barbar. In short: senior personnel got double rations; ordinary workers got single ones.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 2 barig — Išmā-ilum; 2. 2 barig — Ilī, the scribe; 3. 2 barig — Šu-ilīsu, the city elder; 4. [...] — Zuki[ki]; 5. [...] — Adda-[...]; 6. 1 barig — Ḫiwi[riš]; 7. 1 barig — ...[...]; 8. [...] ... [...]; 9. [...] Šarrum, the woman(?) [...]; 10. [... I]lū-ilum; 11. [...] Babanien; 12. 1 barig — Ēšum; 13. 1 barig — Iddi-šum; 14. 1 barig — Abulum; 15. 1 barig — Barbar.
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(barig@c) isz-ma2-dingir 2(barig@c) i3-li2 dub-sar 2(barig@c) szu-i3-li2-su abba2 [iri] [...] zu-ki-[ki] [...] ad-da-[...] 1(barig@c) hi-wi-[ri2-isz] 1(barig@c) x-[...] [...] x [...] [...] szar#-ru-um SAL [...] [... i]-lu5-dingir [...] ba#?-ba-ni-en 1(barig@c) e3-szum 1(barig@c) i-di3-szum 1(barig@c) a-bu-lum 1(barig@c) bar-bar
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 142. 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 (P213407) — 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.