Position in chronology
LB 0217
About this tablet
A small accounting note from the Old Akkadian period (around 2300 BCE), recording the issue of foodstuffs: a quantity of emmer-wheat bread and emmer beer, the beer drawn off into jars. The goods were received by someone — perhaps in connection with a field or the god Ištaran's household — and the clerk closed the entry with the standard bookkeeping stamp 'expenditure'. It is the routine paperwork of a redistributive economy, where bread and beer were the basic currency of rations and offerings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issued: roughly one gur and three barig (several hundred liters) of emmer bar-bread — possibly connected with the god Ištaran — and three barig of emmer beer, which was decanted into jars. The recipient, whose name or destination is partly lost (something 'for the ... field'), took delivery of the goods. The account is marked as a booked expenditure — officially signed out of the stores.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 1(?) gur 3 barig — bar-bread(?) of emmer, (of) Ištaran(?), (measured by the) gur(?), 2. 3 barig of emmer beer, 3. pressed (decanted) into jars; 4. for the [...] field(?) 5. he received (it). 6. Expenditure (booked out).
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
1(asz@c)#? 3(barig@c) ninda-bar#?-[ra?] ziz2 isztaran gur#? 3(barig@c) kasz ziz2 dug-sze3 ba-sur [x x] gan-sze3 szu ba-ti zi-ga
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC) ?) — LB 0217. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: de Liagre Böhl Collection, Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden, Holland (P388751) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
Related tablets
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.