Position in chronology
HSS 10, 190
About this tablet
A payroll record from Gasur (later Nuzi) in northern Iraq, written during the Old Akkadian period, around 2300 BCE. It lists the monthly barley rations owed to a small work gang — one supervisor, four men, two women, and six children — and then multiplies the monthly figure by four to give a total for four months, which a man named Kinakum collected on the group's behalf. Tablets like this show how an early territorial state fed its labor force: standardized rations graded by age and sex, with the arithmetic checked and totaled by a professional scribe.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley ration account: Buzi gets 2 barig; four male workers get 1 barig each; two female workers get 3 ban each; two boys get 3 ban each, two more boys 2 ban each, and two girls 2 ban each. That comes to 1 gur, 4 barig, and 2 ban of barley for one month. For four months the total is 7 gur, 2 barig, and 2 ban of barley rations. Kinakum, the son of Abšam, received the delivery.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1 (person): Buzi — 2 barig (of barley); 2. 4 male workers — 1 barig (each); 3. 2 female workers — 3 ban (each); 4. 2 boys — 3 ban (each); 5. 2 boys — 2 ban (each); 6. 2 girls — 2 ban (each). 7. (Subtotal:) 1 gur, 4 barig, 2 ban of barley rations — 8. (this is) of 1 month. 9. Total: 7 gur, 2 barig, 2 ban of barley rations — 10. (this is) of 4 months. 11. The son of Abšam, 12. Kinakum, 13. received (it).
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
1(asz@c) bu-zi 2(barig@c) 4(asz@c) _gurusz_ 1(barig@c) 2(asz@c) _geme2!_ 3(ban2@c) 2(asz@c) _dumu-nita_ 3(ban2@c) 2(asz@c) _dumu-nita_ 2(ban2@c) 2(asz@c) _dumu-munus_ 2(ban2@c) 1(asz@c) 4(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) _sze-ba gur_ szu 1(asz@c) _iti_ szunigin 7(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 2(ban2@c) _sze-ba gur_ szu 4(asz@c) _iti_ _dumu_ ab-sza-am ki-na-kum im-hur
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — HSS 10, 190. 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 (P213455) — 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.